


All Hawke's Fault

by Dragonflies_and_Katydids



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/F, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/pseuds/Dragonflies_and_Katydids
Summary: Charade doesn't want mages and templars setting fire to her city, she doesn't want a fancy Hightown mansion, and she really doesn't want a maid.Unfortunately, nobody asked her what she wanted.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CheshiNeko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheshiNeko/gifts).



> I went a little sideways with the prompt (or rather, the story dragged me along and we ended up sideways to the prompt), but I hope it turned out!
> 
> As a general note, I'm taking liberties with Hawke's mansion. I think it has to consist of more than the handful of rooms we see, especially since it's referred to as an estate. I picture it like a bigger version of Fenris's mansion, but with a garden, because no good estate would be caught dead without a garden.

This is all Hawke's fault.

Charade finds it refreshing to be able to blame someone else for the state her life is currently in, but it doesn't actually do anything to solve the problems. Kirkwall is still burning, and she still has a Hightown mansion she never wanted.

Having someone else to blame also doesn't help her know what to do with the maid who apparently comes with that Hightown mansion. The elf has bowed shoulders and a quiet, hesitant voice that makes Charade feel like she herself is yelling, even when she knows she isn't. Worse, she looks horrified when Charade suggests she leave Kirkwall, ignoring the hefty bag of sovereigns that would see her comfortably settled for years to come.

"I'm not throwing you out!" Charade says hastily, trying once again to hand over the bag of coin. "But Kirkwall isn't safe, and you need to get out of the city while you can."

The elf's shoulders hunch as if she's bracing for a blow, but she says nothing.

"Where are you from?" Charade asks, trying to find some glimmer of a plan. "You could return there."

"I'm from Tevinter, messere," she says, barely audible.

Charade winces. Tevinter. Of course. There's no need to ask any other questions, not when the bones of the story are obvious. "Family, then," Charade says, a little desperately. "Do you have family who could take you in?"

The elf shakes her head, eyes still on her feet, and Charade sighs. Even if the elf had family, she'd never make it to them, not when everything about her screams that she's easy prey. She'd just end up another corpse in the street.

"All right," Charade says, mostly to herself. It's been a long day, and they'll both be better for food and some sleep. In the meantime...

"What's your name?" Charade asks, making her voice as soft as possible.

"Orana, messere." It's whispered to the carpet, as if she's afraid her name might offend.

"Well, Orana," Charade says, trying to sound cheerful, "it's a pleasure to meet you."

That gets her a cautious look, Orana raising her eyes without raising her head. "Th-thank you, messere."

Charade considers trying to get Orana to call her by her name, then writes that off as a lost cause tonight. There's a long and painful history in the way Orana's back hunches, and Charade is too tired to delve into it now.

Better to let both of them sleep on it, even if that does mean Charade ends up sleeping in Hawke's bed. She'd rather Hawke's than Leandra's, though. Actually, she'd rather sleep on the ground outside than in the perfectly preserved shrine to dead family that is Leandra Hawke's former room. Charade takes one look inside and adds it to the list of things she isn't prepared to deal with tonight.

"Messere Hawke's room is right here," Orana offers, though Charade hasn't said anything.

"Thank you," Charade says gratefully.

She's less grateful when they get to Hawke's room and Orana tries to help her undress. "I'm fine!" Charade says, fending off Orana's hands without thinking. "Really, I'm fine on my own."

Orana is looking at the carpet, but Charade still senses disapproval. Well, she'll just have to live with disappointment, because Charade has been dressing herself for years. Her sympathy for Orana's plight doesn't mean she's going to allow herself to get pulled into the role Orana thinks she "should" fill.

"You must be tired, too," Charade says, as diplomatically as possible.

"Yes, messere."

It's not really agreement, but Charade ignores that. "I'll see you in the morning, then."

Orana hesitates for a moment, and any faint amusement Charade feels at the situation dies. Easy to know exactly what calculation Orana is making: if her services aren't needed, then she could be out on the street tomorrow.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, messere?" Orana asks at last, with what she probably thinks is a coy look.

Charade hides her disgust by turning away. Ugh. Orana is pretty, in an underfed sort of way, but Charade feels absolutely no desire to take her up on the implied offer. Less than no desire.

"I'm fine," she says.

Not until the door closes does Charade relax. Andraste preserve her, a servant and a mansion. She's not a noble, and she's never wanted to be one. What was Hawke _thinking_?

Well, whatever Hawke was thinking, the stone walls of Hawke's bedroom won't be providing any answers. Better to get ready for sleep, even if it feels odd to sleep in a room that so clearly belongs to someone else, full of someone else's possessions and the mementos of someone else's life. Sleep is sleep, and nothing so simple as "odd" is going to keep her awake tonight.

Thoughts of Orana do trouble her briefly. No matter how uncomfortable it makes Charade to be waited on by anyone, it has to be far worse for Orana, left behind in a city at war with itself, with a mistress who doesn't want any help. They're stuck with each other for now, but it won't be forever. The city guard will restore order soon enough--if there's one person capable of bringing Kirkwall to heel, it's Aveline--and Orana can make plans for her life in the meantime. The money Hawke left can't solve every problem, but it certainly opens up a number of options that might not otherwise be available.

Reassured, Charade pulls the blankets tighter around herself. This is only temporary, she reminds herself. Just until the fighting dies down.

###

The fighting does not die down.

It's quiet the following morning, but it's a waiting kind of quiet, both sides drawing back to tend their wounded and plan new strategies rather than surrender. From the window outside Hawke's bedroom, Charade watches a few brave souls scurry down the streets in search of whatever they can't live without, food or elfroot or missing relatives. The only people about are servants, of course. Kirkwall's nobles still think they can hide from the chaos, but Charade is beginning to suspect no one will have that luxury for long.

She eats breakfast in the kitchen and tries to draw out Orana, who spends the entire conversation trying to pretend she isn't scandalized by her mistress hanging about in what should be the exclusive domain of servants. That the mansion has exactly one servant at the moment doesn't seem to matter.

The only time Orana voices even the mildest protest is when Charade asks her whether she needs anything from the markets.

"You're going out?" Orana asks, her voice rising a little too sharply for the good little Tevinter slave she was taught to be.

So Hawke did have some influence on her, at least, and maybe Charade can reinforce that in whatever time they spend together before she can find a way to get Orana out of Kirkwall.

"I need to know what's happening," Charade says cheerfully. She doesn't feel especially cheerful, but she doesn't want even the slightest chance that Orana would misinterpret her tone as a rebuke. "And while I'm out, I might as well pick up anything we need. Always assuming there's any merchants to be found."

She also needs to re-establish contact with the Jennies, see who's survived and if they have any plans, but she's not going to tell that to Orana.

"It's so dangerous!" Orana protests.

"I'm fairly dangerous myself," Charade says. She touches her bow where it rests against the table, running her fingers over the wood grain. "I'll be all right."

Orana ducks her head, back to deferential. "As you say, messere."

Charade swallows a sigh and the last of her breakfast, then heads out to see what she can find.

Not much, it turns out. The markets are exactly as empty as Charade feared, and there's no elfroot to be had for any amount of money. Hawke left behind a rather impressive pile of coin, but it gets her nothing, only makes the merchants even more forlorn when they can't give her what she needs.

Unsurprisingly, her usual contacts with the Jennies have gone into the wind. Charade spends most of the day wandering the city, hoping to spot someone she knows, with no luck. She leaves a few messages in the usual places, knowing there's nothing for it but to wait for someone to get in touch with her. The Jennies are very good at disappearing when necessary, and even their friends won't find them if they don't want to be found.

Which leaves Charade nothing to do but wait. And Maker help her, she has a feeling she's going to get very tired of that very soon.


	2. Chapter 2

Charade goes out every day after that, picking up news where she can, avoiding the fighting when it flares up. Those flares are always brief, skirmishes rather than a return to all-out fighting, but they're a reminder of how quickly everything can fall apart again.

There's no set route or plan to her wandering, just a need to get away from Hawke's mansion and the unpleasant feeling she gets wandering through it. How could Hawke stand to live in that huge house with so little company? Even with only a few rooms open and in use, Charade is constantly aware of the bulk of the house all around her.

At least Orana stops looking sideways at her whenever she comes into the kitchen, and Charade thinks she feels it too, the oppressive weight of all that empty space. Unlike Charade, though, she seems more comfortable inside the walls than outside them, and so Charade ventures out alone every day.

It shouldn't be possible to grow complacent in a city at war with itself, but somehow, that's exactly what happens. Too many days and nights wandering through it, learning the back alleys and the places to avoid, and Charade's attention begins to lose its edge.

Six days after the Chantry exploded, she turns into an alley a few blocks from Hawke's mansion and almost literally stumbles over a fight in progress: a boy of maybe sixteen, curled up on his knees with his arms over his head as a templar aims a kick at his ribs. There's blood on the cobblestones, and the boy is sobbing, begging for mercy through at least a broken nose, if the sound of his voice is anything to go by. Three other templars stand by, their expressions a study in contrasts: one sick, one bored, one avid.

Four against one isn't the best odds, but Charade is hardly going to walk away. Her first arrow goes straight into the avid templar's eye; better to take out the ones who aren't otherwise occupied first. Her second arrow finds the gap between helmet and gorget as the bored templar turns to gape at her, his head twisted round at an odd angle.

By that time, the third has leaped over the boy she was kicking, jerking her sword from its sheath as she runs down the alley toward Charade. She's less than half a dozen strides away when Charade's third arrow punches straight through her breastplate and into her lungs, the longbow's power enough to knock her back at such close range.

Charade still has to dance away to avoid a last flailing attempt to hit her with the sword, but it's a weak attempt at best and the templar collapses mid-swing. Even as she's dodging, Charade grabs for a fourth arrow and brings it up to bear on the last templar.

Who's just standing there staring at her. For a moment, Charade thinks he's frozen in fear, but then she looks at his face: resigned, sick, exhausted. Ready to die, even a little eager for it. He's young, maybe nothing but a recruit last week.

She lowers her bow slightly. He's far enough away she could kill him before he closed the distance between them, but she doesn't want to, not anymore.

"You need better friends," she says conversationally.

To her surprise, the corner of his mouth twitches. "I've learned that."

She should kill him now, and save herself--or someone else--the trouble later. By the look on his face, he'd thank her for it. Still...

"Look," she says, releasing the tension on the bow string. "Give me what elfroot you have on you, and you can go."

He's shaking his head before she even finishes, and her fingers tighten, ready to draw the bowstring back again. "It's a fair trade, your life for a bit of elfroot you can replace as soon as you get to the Gallows."

"I can't go back to the Gallows," he says dully. "Or give you elfroot, for that matter."

Interesting. "Why can't you go back to the Gallows?"

His eyebrows shoot up, the most emotion she's seen from him so far. "They'd hang me for a traitor."

She makes a point of looking at his armor, with its burnished, burning sword. "Really?"

"The Order's splintered," he says, rubbing one gauntleted hand over his breastplate. Metal shrieks against metal, and Charade winces, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"You chose the wrong splinter, then," she says.

"I didn't get to choose," he says bitterly.

She doesn't want to pity him, not when he stood by and watched his fellows beat a helpless boy, but she does anyway.

"And the elfroot?" she asks. "Why can't you give it to me?"

"I have none. Too many who needed it, and they've already used up most of what they could carry from the Gallows."

Charade wonders if he's listening to himself: "they," not "we."

"They don't want us wasting it," he says, the bitterness back in his voice.

Getting involved in the templars' internal disputes is a bad idea, even by the standards of the Jennies. Charade squashes any burgeoning impulse to meddle and says instead, "Help me carry him home, then," she tilts her chin at the boy still huddled on the cobbles, "and we can pretend we never met. Tell them your friends were killed in an ambush and you were left alive as a warning."

"Ambushed by who?" he asks, confused and skeptical.

There are so many answers she could give him. Maker, she could just let him figure it out on his own and suffer the consequences if his superiors find out.

Instead, she smiles at him and says, "Tell them you were ambushed by Red Jenny."

###

Charade carries the boy and lets the templar act as guard, his armor more a deterrent than his sword. At the mansion's front door, he hesitates, looking almost longingly inside, but Charade's tolerance has reached its limit for one night. She kicks the door shut in his face and sets her unconscious burden down on the bench just inside the front hallway. Just as well for the boy that he passed out somewhere on the way home; at least it spared him the pain until she could get some elfroot into him.

Orana appears from the side door and Charade braces herself for a fit of hysterics. Someone who flinches when Charade laughs too loudly seems like exactly the sort of person to faint at the sight of blood.

"I've got him," Charade says, hoping to fend off any fainting. She doesn't need _two_ patients right now.

"I'll get the elfroot," Orana says, as if Charade asked.

Since it gets her out of the front hall, Charade just nods and sets to work cutting away the boy's shirt and trousers. A few bruises are already coming up, and there are swollen places Charade knows will be purple and black for weeks. The fingers on one hand are broken, as if stomped by a booted foot, and his other arm is cut open, probably slashed by a sword.

"Here, messere," Orana says at her elbow, startling Charade out of her inspection. "I've brought the elfroot."

She's calm, and she's brought more than the jar of powdered elfroot: she has a steaming kettle in the hand not holding out the jar, a bowl under one arm, and several lengths of bandages over the other arm.

While Charade stares, Orana sets everything but the bandages on the floor by the bench and steps close enough to inspect the boy's injuries herself. If she's troubled by them, she gives no sign, and her fingers when she touches him are firm without causing unnecessary pain.

"Messere Hawke didn't leave much elfroot," she says absently. "I'll buy more tomorrow."

"There's none to be bought," Charade says, bemused.

Orana touches the edges of the cut on the boy's arm, unconcerned by the blood it smears on her fingers. "Then it would be best to use only enough to save him from dying."

She's so matter-of-fact about the whole thing, Charade doesn't know what to say except, "Do what you think best."

There's a moment where Orana hesitates, the shy servant coming back to the fore, and Charade deliberately steps back, making it clear she meant what she said. "Tell me what you need me to do." And when Orana continues to hesitate, clearly struggling with the idea of ordering her mistress to do anything, Charade adds, "He needs help quickly."

That gets her moving, and once moving, she doesn't stop again. She's quick and efficient, washing away blood and dirt to see the full extent of the boy's injuries while Charade makes an elfroot paste and rubs it into the boy's skin where Orana directs. Which injuries get elfroot and which don't sometimes makes no sense to Charade--she would have treated the slash and left the bruises to heal on their own--but when Orana directs her to apply it liberally to the boy's stomach, Charade doesn't protest. His hand gets a few dabs of the paste once Orana has straightened his fingers, but no more than a few.

Orana closes the cut on his arm with neat stitches, rubbing her thread with elfroot as she works. For the first time since Charade met her, she looks at ease, like this is something she understands and knows exactly how to handle, and it finally breaks through to Charade why. Only the most valuable slaves would be given elfroot; the rest would have to make do with other methods, perhaps occasionally supplemented by any herbs they dared steal. Of course Orana knows how to treat someone with the least use of elfroot possible. Of course she does.

It all makes Charade's head pound, but there's little she can do about it now. Better not to think about it as she helps Orana carry him up the stairs to Leandra's bed. For Charade, that room is full of the shadows of the dead, but at least there's now one person in the house who won't be bothered by them.

He sleeps through the night, waking the next morning only long enough to mumble incoherently at them before sliding back into sleep. Concerned, Charade asks Orana, "Is that normal?" She doesn't have enough experience with such slow methods of healing.

"Normal enough, messere," Orana says.

"You can call me Charade, you know."

"Yes, messere," Orana says without looking at her.

Charade resists the urge to roll her eyes. Barely.


	3. Chapter 3

Charade leaves the mansion around noon, too restless to sit around while Orana cleans fireplaces that don't need cleaning and the boy mutters to himself in his sleep. At least the fighting is at another lull, though that doesn't have much effect on people's willingness to step outside unless absolutely necessary. The streets are still nearly empty, the few merchants still have nothing useful to sell, and that heavy, waiting calm still hangs in the air. It does nothing to improve her mood.

Neither does visiting her father for yet another attempt to convince him to move to Hightown. He wouldn't come with her before, and he won't come with her now.

"I don't need anyone's charity," he snaps when she suggests it again.

Meaning he doesn't need Hawke's charity.

Charade sighs and switches to more underhanded tactics. "I just found you, do you think I want to see you dead?"

"I can get dead in Hightown just as easily," he says, jaw set stubbornly.

"But in Hightown, I could protect you. You could protect me."

He snorts, but there's also a smile at the corners of his eyes. Yes, he knows exactly what she's trying to do. "You don't need my protection, girl. And I've lived here for years. We'll take care of each other down here, don't you worry."

They go around in circles for half the afternoon--or at least, that's what it feels like to Charade--before she gets tired of it and returns home. The walk back to Hightown only gives her time to stew, and she slams the mansion's front door mainly because it's the only outlet she has for her frustration. It feels like there's nothing she can do about anything, and that's never sat well with her.

"Messere?" Orana asks hesitantly. She's standing in the doorway from the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron and looking a bit alarmed.

"Nothing," Charade says, trying not to snap. It isn't Orana's fault Gamlen is a stubborn old fool.

"All right," Orana says. Her hands have to be dry by now, but she continues to rub at them idly, looking down as if fascinated by the fabric of her apron. "Would you like some tea?"

"I...." About to decline, she blows out a long breath instead. "Yes, actually. Tea would be nice, thank you."

The kitchen is warm and full of the smell of whatever's bubbling away in the pot over the fire. Stew, if the meals of the last few days are anything to go by, but Charade isn't complaining. Orana is an excellent cook, and it's been a long time since Charade had a hot meal whenever she wanted one. The last thing she's going to do is complain about repetition.

Tea _is_ very nice, it turns out, helping to soothe Charade's frustrations with her father. Watching Orana move around the kitchen is equally soothing. She's more at ease here than anywhere else Charade has seen her, except last night tending the boy's injuries.

"How's our guest?" Charade asks, reminded.

"He's well," Orana says. "He woke again while you were out, and ate a bit." Her head ducks down between her shoulders. "I'm sorry, messere, but I had to give him something to make him sleep. He tried to get out of bed, and it's too soon for that."

Charade tries to imagine Orana successfully force-feeding anything to anyone, and can't. "How did you get him to take it?"

"I thought he might try something like it," Orana says. She hasn't moved in a while, that careful stillness when she's waiting to see how Charade will react. "I added deathroot to the water I gave him."

"Deathroot?" Charade asks, eyebrows going up.

"Just a bit!" Orana says, darting a nervous look in her direction. "And mixed with other things. Only enough to make him sleep, I swear!"

"So long as it keeps him in bed," Charade says. "You know better than me, when it comes to this kind of thing." She knows several ways to kill people with deathroot, but she's never seen a need to learn any milder uses for it. Maybe she needs to rethink that.

Orana goes back to chopping vegetables, and Charade sips her tea, watching her from the corner of one eye. If Orana is aware of the scrutiny, she doesn't show it.

"Did you find what you were looking for, messere?" Orana asks eventually. "When you went out?"

Charade snorts. "Not really, no. I was hoping to convince my father to come here, but he's a stubborn bastard. He'd rather stay in Lowtown than move in here."

"Oh," Orana says. There's a strange, wistful note to her voice that makes Charade look up sharply.

Shooting not entirely in the dark, Charade asks, "Do you know your father?"

"I did, messere," Orana says. Her hands have stopped moving, the knife poised above another vegetable. "He's dead now, though."

"I'm sorry," Charade says quietly, feeling guilty. She shouldn't have asked.

"It's all right," Orana says. Her hands remain frozen mid-motion, and she doesn't look up. "Messere Hawke saved me, but Papa was already dead."

"Ah." What else can she say, besides another pointless apology?

Orana's knife comes down with more force than necessary, but the cut after that is less violent. "My papa is the one who taught me to cook."

"He was a good teacher, then."

"Thank you, messere." The words are a damp whisper.

Charade pushes back from the table and crosses the kitchen, ostensibly to get herself another cup of tea. On the way by, she squeezes Orana's shoulder once, lightly. Orana nods as if in answer to the words Charade didn't say.

###

Their guest wakes again in the middle of the night, and the sound of him falling out of bed is enough to bring both Charade and Orana running. He's struggling to his feet when they burst into the room, and he clings to one of the bedposts when Charade tries to get him back into bed.

"My family," he says, voice rough from disuse. "I need-"

"You need to lie down," Charade says firmly. "Tell me where they are, and I'll let them know you're fine."

"No!" He manages a surprisingly loud yell for someone who can't even stand unaided. "You don't understand, they need me, I have to protect them!"

Charade sincerely hopes that's just the arrogance of youth, that there isn't really a family out there who needs the protection of a sixteen-year-old boy. "You can't protect anyone right now," she tells him bluntly. "Tell me where they are, because you'll only kill yourself if you try to go to them."

He looks agonized, but Charade doesn't back down, and eventually, he gives her directions to a place in Darktown. The directions are quite detailed, and she makes him repeat them while she dresses in clothes she doesn't mind ruining with a trip into the sewers. Because of course that's where she's going; that's just the way her life is these days. About the only thing she can be grateful for is that she meets no trouble on her way through Kirkwall.

Not until she gets to the sewers, at least.

She's counting turns, trying not to think about what's in the water around her ankles, when a small shadow launches itself from a side passage, knives flashing in the light of Charade's lantern. A shadow with more zeal than skill, though, and Charade sidesteps easily.

The shadow whips around to lunge again, and Charade says hastily, "I'm from Walter!" Light from her lantern shows her a girl of maybe ten, and again Charade wonders about Walter's family.

"Walter?" the girl asks, straightening from her crouch. "Where is he?"

"He's safe," Charade says, "but he wants you to come with me. You'll be safer with him than here."

She hasn't even finished before the girl bolts down another tunnel, calling over her shoulder, "Come on!"

Charade follows at a trot, only to come to a complete stop when she turns a corner and the light from her lantern answers her questions about Walter's family.

Children. They're all children. A dozen of them, mostly Ferelden, a few elven, none of them older than fourteen.

And all ready to fight her. They're gathering knives and crossbows, but before Charade can react, the girl who'd been guiding her rushes forward to stand between Charade and the others, shouting, "She's from Walter!"

No one lowers their weapons, and to her left, three pairs of hands begin to glow. Not just children, then, but mage children. Wonderful. Because her life wasn't already complicated enough.

"Walter's safe," Charade says.

"So says you." That's another girl, this one standing toward the front of the group, gripping two knives like she knows how to use them.

"So says me," Charade agrees. "He told me to say that Evelina wants you to come with me."

Who Evelina is, or whether she's even a real person, Charade doesn't know, but all around her, weapons are lowered. The girl with the knives is still glowering suspiciously, but she makes no move to stop the others.

To Charade's left, three pairs of hands cease to glow.

###

Leandra's room is hastily rearranged to make room for a dozen additions to the household, since they refuse to sleep where Walter isn't. They don't mind sharing blankets, at least, and in fact are appallingly grateful to have blankets at all.

"We're going to need more beds," Charade says to Orana when their newest guests are settled for the night. They're back down in the kitchen, Orana pretending to scrub out a large pot while Charade sits at the table and sips more tea.

"Yes, messere," Orana agrees. Her hands move over the curve of the pot, like it isn't already as clean as cast iron ever gets.

"What about food?" Charade asks. She hasn't made it down to the cellars or the pantry yet, mostly because Orana has barely adapted to having her in the kitchen.

"We're stocked well enough for a while," Orana says. "It won't be fancy if it needs to last, but there's plenty to feed us all for a month at least."

"That's one blessing," Charade says. She takes another sip of tea, then sighs, exasperated. "You and I both know that thing is clean. Will you sit, please?"

Orana's fingers flex on the lip of the pot. "It's not clean enough, messere. I'll sit in a moment."

Another fight Charade isn't going to win, and she suspects offering to help would send Orana into the hysterics she didn't have at the sight of Walter's broken body.

"I suppose we're well enough off, then," Charade says. They have food and shelter, and there's a deep well in the center of the kitchen garden. It'll do, and it's a sight better than most of the people in the city have.

"As you say, messere."

Charade squints at the back of Orana's head. "Is there anything else we need?" she asks, and when Orana hesitates, she adds, "I'd rather know now than later."

"There...are a few things," Orana says reluctantly.

"Such as...?"

"Wood," Orana offers diffidently. "And kindling."

True. They'll have a hard time cooking otherwise, and Charade doesn’t look forward to gnawing on raw roots. "How much do we have?"

"Enough for a week," Orana says. This time she sounds completely confident, and Charade remembers that she's served in this house for years. She knows what it needs to run effectively.

"Anything else?" Charade asks.

Orana hesitates again. "Perhaps cloth?"

"For bandages?"

"Ahhh, yes, messere. Those, too. But cloth for clothes. For the children." Orana whirls around so abruptly Charade sloshes tea on herself. "If that's all right!"

"Of course it's all right," Charade says, wiping her hand on her trousers. "They'll need shoes, too, won't they?"

"Yes, messere." Orana's hand strokes over the pot's rim again, as if touching it soothes her. "And blankets."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, messere."

Charade can feel other words blocked up behind that simple acknowledgement, and she has a sinking feeling she knows what they are. "There's more, isn't there?"

"Elfroot," Orana says, as if the word is dragged from her. "We've almost used up what Messere Hawke left."

"I'm guessing there's not much of anything else, either?"

"No, messere." She's forgotten completely about pretending to scrub out the pot, her hand only patting it absently now. "A little deathroot, a few deep mushrooms. A bit of lyrium and silverite."

"None of the expensive ingredients, then," Charade says dryly.

"No, messere." Orana is thinking hard now, giving the table a frown of deep concentration. "Lamp oil and candles. A new rope for the well, the old one's wearing through. And perhaps an extra, if we'll be here long. Straw. A larger pot, Messere Hawke never did entertain so many people at once. Perhaps two. More cups and bowls and spoons, or you'll have to share between you."

Andraste preserve her. For all her time with the Jennies, Charade never realized how much went into the running of a house. And Orana isn't done yet.

"Baskets, they break so easily. As do jugs, and cooking spoons." Her fingers move like she's counting something, or sorting through the contents of a drawer. "Soap, of course. Paper and ink, or oak galls if you wish me to make it. Messere Hawke's workroom has the rest of what I'd need. String, and-"

"String?" Charade breaks in, laughing. "For what?"

Orana looks at her as if she's lost her mind. "For _everything_." Then she flushes and bows her head. "I'm sorry, messere, I should never have spoken to you like that."

"Why not?" Charade asks. She doesn't expect an answer, and so isn't disappointed when Orana remains silent. "If I give you the money, can you find what you need?"

"Of course, messere."

One less thing to worry about, thank the Maker. "Then here." Charade waits for Orana to look at her, then tosses her the key to Hawke's strongbox. "I'm sure you know where that goes. Take what you need."

Orana clutches the key in her hand, looking taken aback. "I'll give you a proper accounting for it, I promise."

"Don't bother," Charade says. She takes another sip of her tea, pressing her palms to the warm clay as she thinks about what she's seen out in the city. "And don't be afraid of buying too much. We may be here a while."


	4. Chapter 4

The fighting resumes before dawn, announced by an explosion in Darktown that's loud enough to wake the entire city. All the children crowd onto the upstairs landing to peer out the windows, and Walter hobbles after them, supported by the oldest two. Even something so simple leaves him pale and sweating, and he doesn't protest when Charade orders him back to bed.

"How much elfroot do we have?" Charade asks Orana later. She keeps her voice low so the half dozen children eating at the table won't hear her. "Can we give him more?"

Orana chews her lower lip, clearly torn. "If you wish, messere," she says to the bubbling pot she's stirring.

"But we shouldn't?"

"It's your decision, messere." She glances at Charade from the corner of her eye. "But he'll be well enough if he'd stay in bed. It only takes time."

Charade gives her a lopsided smile. "That's fair. A couple of them," she tilts her head at the table, "look mean enough to sit on him. I'll make sure they-"

There's a scream from the study, and Charade runs for the door, almost leaping over the table in her haste. She tears around the corner into the study to find two of the children backed against one wall while a third huddles on the floor by the fire, hands pressed between his knees and his body curled over them.

"I'm sorry!" he cries as Charade skids into the room. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, please don't tell, I'm sorry!"

Tell who? Not the important question right now, but Charade makes a note to come back to it later. "What happened?"

"Nothing!" That comes from one of the children who'd been pressed to the wall moments ago. They're coming forward now, putting themselves between Charade and the boy on the floor. "Nothing happened. He played a prank and it scared me, that's all."

Charade gives them a slow blink of disbelief. "A prank."

Two chins come up in rebellious silence. The only sound is the occasional sniffle from the boy on the floor.

All of the other children are gathering behind her, and Charade can feel the weight of their stares. She's never considered children terrifying, but the tension in the room is now every bit as fraught as the tension in the city outside.

Moving carefully, Charade takes a half step sideways to get a better look at the boy on the floor. There are scorch marks on the rug beside him, and one of those marks is a perfect imprint of a hand. A small hand. A child's hand.

"What Circle did you come from?" she asks, more mindful of her tone than she's ever been with Orana.

"No Circle," he whispers to the rug. "Please don't tell, I won't do it again!"

"Shut it!" someone says. It's the girl with the two knives, and her hands are tight around the hilts as she plants herself in front of Charade. "He's not from no Circle, and he don't need one."

"I didn't say he did," Charade says mildly. "I was just curious."

The girl snorts. "Well, don't be curious about _him_."

"Enough, Tamra," Walter says from above them.

Everyone jumps except the boy on the floor, who curls tighter around himself and whispers, "I'm sorry."

Charade looks up to find Walter leaning heavily against the railing that overlooks the study. Even from here, she can watch him sway. "You should be in bed," she says with a smile, hoping to break some of the tension in the room.

"I should," Walter agrees, but he's not looking at her. "Tamra, take Matthias and the others back to the kitchen."

For all that he's only sixteen, and injured at that, Walter manages to be entirely in command. Tamra shoots Charade a dark look, but she does as she was told.

When the others are gone, Charade climbs the stairs to help Walter back to bed yet again. "You need to _stay_ in bed this time."

"I'm trying," he says, frustrated. "But they're my family. Evelina wanted me to take care of them, and I can't just let them get into trouble. Any of them."

"Like Matthias?" Charade asks.

Walter grimaces. "Like Matthias, yes. I'm sorry, I should have warned you about him."

"I had an idea," Charade says. "What about the other two?" He gives her a startled look, and she laughs a little. "I thought they were going to set me on fire, when they first saw me. It's a little hard to miss the burning hands."

"I've told them not to-" He cuts himself off. "Sorry, yes. Or no, I suppose. Ines and Donall are unlikely to set anyone on fire by accident."

That's not actually very reassuring. "But Matthias is."

Walter doesn't answer immediately, which is even less reassuring. He lets Charade help him back into bed and settles against the headboard, tugging at the blankets with his unbandaged hand, first one way and then the other, all without meeting her eyes.

"How worried should I be?" Charade prompts, when she reaches the point where she wants to slap his hand to make him stop fidgeting.

"We'll keep it under control," Walter says, frowning at the bandages around his broken hand. "We always have."

"That sounds a little frightening, actually."

Walter huffs out a brief laugh, then winces, pressing a hand to his ribs. "It's best if we can keep him calm, but otherwise, we just make sure either Ines or Donall is always with him. This morning was just too much, I think. Moving here and then the explosion. He's scared, and Ines and Donall are distracted...." Walter trails off with an awkward shrug.

Maker save her, what a disaster. And the potential for worse disasters is staggering. "How often does he lose control?"

"He's only seven!" Walter protests, wringing the blankets with his good hand.

"I know," Charade says. "But I also need to know what kind of danger we're in. Does this happen a lot?"

"Not that I know of," Walter says without meeting her eyes.

Charade thinks about that for a while, then asks, "The others hide it from you, don't they? When Matthias loses control. He said, 'Don't tell,' and I thought he meant the templars, but it was you."

"I don't know. Maybe?" He swallows. "Probably. We used to hide it from Evelina, sometimes. If no one saw, and no one got hurt."

"And now you're the one in charge, so they hide it from you." Disaster is too mild a word. It's like having a barrel of gaatlok that everyone wants to pretend is nothing more than a table. All anyone has to do is knock over a candle, and then the only consolation will be that at least she won't be alive to deal with the after-effects. "Even if the templars don't find out, this could blow up in all our faces."

Walter twists the blankets in his good hand. "What are you going to do?"

"Right now?" Charade asks. "Check on Matthias. Check on the others."

"And later?"

Andraste's ashes, what is she supposed to say to that? She can't lie and pretend she's unconcerned about an uncontrolled mage living in the same house she is, but she also can't stand the thought of turning them all out. Because it is all or nothing, she already understands that much: if she send Matthias away, the rest will go with him.

And why does it matter? She didn't want to be responsible for any of this in the first place: not Hawke's mansion, not Orana, and certainly not Walter and his family. What she really wants is for someone to take this entire mess off her hands and let her go back to being a Jenny. A job to do, and once it's done, she's on to the next, not trapped in a swamp that's dragging her slowly under.

"Messere?" Walter asks. "What will you do later?"

"Charade," she says absently. "Not messere."

"Sorry," he says. "Orana...I just thought..."

"If you can find a way to make Orana call me by name, I'd be delighted," Charade says. "Please don't you make it worse."

"Sorry," he says again.

Charade waves it away, too deep in thought to really be aware of him. She wants the freedom of being a Jenny again, but she became a Jenny to help people like Orana, like Walter and his family. Whether that means she has to risk death by mage fire is still open to debate.

"What will you do?" Walter asks again, his voice quavering a little.

Charade wishes she had some comfort to give him. "I don't know."

###

The kitchen is quiet when Charade comes downstairs, the other half of the children eating their breakfast. She doesn't know where the rest are, but Matthias sits quietly between Donall and Ines, shoulders hunched and head bowed over his food.

Charade pours herself some tea, then leans against the counter where Orana is working and repeats the important details from her conversation with Walter. Orana listens in silence, only the tight line of her mouth revealing any emotion.

"What a mess," Charade mutters into her cup when she's done.

Orana makes an acknowledging noise without looking up.

"At least Ines and Donall can do _something_ ," she adds, trying to draw Orana out. "Maybe we won't all burn in our beds."

"As you say, messere." Orana looks around for a moment, though Charade isn't sure at what. "I've always felt safe here. In this house."

Charade blinks at her, unsure which one of them has lost the conversation. "Because of Hawke?"

Orana nods, turning away to stir the pot hanging over the fire. "Oh yes, Messere Hawke was always very kind. But it's the house itself, too. All this stone, it's good to have it around me. Perhaps I'm more dwarf than elf." She tastes the stew while Charade stares, still confused. "But it's so hard to damage stone, isn't it, messere?"

Understanding dawns and startles Charade into a laugh that draws five pairs of eyes to her instantly. Orana doesn't turn, and Matthias continues to study his breakfast with intense concentration, but the others stare at her with varying degrees of hostility.

It dries up the laughter as quick as it came, leaving her restless and unhappy. This isn't her house or her place. Why did Hawke do this to her?

###

The most recent battle is still tearing apart the city, but Charade leaves the house anyway, telling herself she needs to check for messages from the other Jennies. That there are no answers somehow manages to be both unsurprising and unsettling, leaving Charade even less interested in returning to the mansion.

Gamlen is still fine, and still uninterested in moving to Hightown, though at this point, Charade only argues with him for form's sake. She wants him safe, but Hawke's mansion might not count as that anymore. Even if Hightown is safer than Lowtown, Gamlen's abrasive temper could strike exactly the wrong kind of sparks.

She loves her father, but she's not blind to the less charming aspects of his personality.

With all that restless energy driving her, perhaps it isn't a surprise that she finds the fight she wouldn't even admit she wanted. Looters this time instead of templars, breaking into a shop while the owner tries to fend them off, and somehow that makes Charade even angrier. As if there isn't enough trouble in Kirkwall. People have to make _more_?

It isn't difficult to scale a pile of rubble and gain a good vantage point on the roof of a nearby building. She shoots the first looter without hesitation, catching him in the throat as he grabs the shop owner by the hair to drag her bodily into the street. The rest of them have no sense at all, running about rather than hiding, and shooting them is almost too easy. Charade would feel guilty if the shop owner wasn't holding to the doorframe of her shop, dress half off one shoulder.

By the time Charade makes it back down to the street, the woman has already begun to straighten her door on its hinges and inspect the damage. She stops when she sees Charade's bow, her eyes tracking to the nearest looter and the arrows piercing his body.

"Thank you," the woman says. Her expression is wary, her fingers gripping the wood of the door. "But I have no way to pay you."

"It was my pleasure," Charade says, yanking an arrow free of a body with more force than necessary. Has Kirkwall truly reached the point where no one does anything without expecting payment?

The woman is still eyeing her sideways, though now it's more skeptical than suspicious, and a bit of Charade's sense of humor returns. As she checks the fletching for damage, she smiles a little and adds, "Red Jenny's always looking for new friends."


	5. Chapter 5

The mansion is in chaos when she returns, and Charade stops just inside the front door to stare. Barrels and boxes and crates fill the entryway, and the children are all over the place, picking things up and putting them back down a few feet away, climbing on the crates and peering into the barrels and talking over each other so loudly Charade feels it like an attack.

Before she can decide what to do, Orana says from behind her, "Your pardon, messere?"

Charade wheels around and stares again, this time at Orana with three of the children in tow, all of them laden with baskets and cloth-wrapped bundles, waiting to get past her with varying degrees of patience.

"What is all this?" Charade asks, stepping aside to let them in.

Orana gives her a startled look. "I'm sorry, messere, you said to buy what we needed and not worry about the cost. I can try to return some of it, but-"

"No, no, that's fine," Charade says, waving her off. "I didn't mean it like that. I just...did you buy all this _today_?" It's a ridiculous question, but she can't think of anything else.

"Of course, messere," Orana says, eyeing her sideways. "I took the children to help, I couldn't carry it all by myself."

" _All_ of this?" Charade asks, staring around the room. The children have gone quiet, watching the two of them with wary eyes, frozen in the middle of whatever they were doing when Orana came in. "I can't even find someone to sell me three leaves of elfroot, and you found all of this?"

"I couldn't find elfroot, either, messere," Orana says, fingers tightening on the handle of the basket she's carrying. "I looked everywhere, but I didn't have enough time."

"Take all the time you need," Charade says, shaking her head in admiration. "Everybody in the city has to be stockpiling food, and you've found enough to feed us for months."

"It's not all food," Orana says, like she's admitting to some personal failing. "I bought what I could, though." She chews her lower lip briefly, not looking at Charade as she says softly, "It cost rather a lot, messere."

"I don't care," Charade says. "Whatever you paid, it was worth it. I just don't know how you did it."

"Messere Hawke still has friends in this city," Orana says. "And I've served here long enough to know a few people."

Charade looks around the room again, and this time, she finds order in the chaos as the children resume work. What she took for random movement is actually careful organization, sorting items into sections based on where they'll be stored in the house itself. Even as she watches, Tamra and one of the older boys appear from the door across the entryway to gather up another load and cart it away.

"What can I do to help?" Charade asks.

"Oh, we'll be fine on our own," Orana protests. "I'll see this all cleared away by morning, I promise."

That seems nearly impossible even if they stay up all night. Possible or not, Charade isn't going to leave children to push barrels bigger than they are around a house that technically belongs to her.

"I'm going to help," Charade says, as kindly as possible. "So you might as well tell me where I can do the most good, or I'm just going to get in the way."

It isn't as easy as that, of course, and eventually Charade just assigns herself the task of hauling the heavier items wherever they need to go. To her surprise, they do manage to clear the entryway without working too far into the night, even if they don't get everything put exactly where it needs to go.

The next morning is easier. The children aren't quiet, but when Charade points them in the direction of the mansion's unused rooms, they entertain themselves happily for the rest of the day, poking into chests of dry-rotted silk and hiding behind couches that have sat unused for longer than some of them have been alive.

Even the city itself is almost calm. The fighting has burned itself out again, and there are more people in the streets. Smoke hangs over a good portion of the city, and the people in the street are less talkative than usual, but Charade begins to hope that maybe they're through the worst of it.

As days pass with nothing worse than the occasional brawl, that hope grows. The city is quiet, the children are adapting if still unsure what they think of her or Orana, and Walter begins to show real signs of healing. Matthias doesn't slip again, and Charade is secretly glad of the excuse to put off making a decision about him. She knows she can't do that forever, but it gets easier and easier to ignore, the longer everything stays quiet.

###

The quiet ends in the middle of the night with another explosion, this one so close it actually makes the walls tremble. Charade stumbles out of bed, grabbing for her bow and quiver instead of her boots, a decision she regrets as soon as she reaches the landing: the explosion blew in the windows, and there's now broken glass everywhere. Swearing, she dashes back into the bedroom long enough to grab her boots, stomping into them on her way across the landing.

Not fast enough. The children are already out of Leandra's room, the youngest stepping on the glass shards before the older ones can stop them.

Their screaming is loud enough to drown the sounds of fighting from outside, cries of pain mixing with belated warnings and pointless scoldings. Still unsteady with her feet not quite settled in her boots, Charade can't even make herself heard the first time she tries.

Taking a deep breath, she lets out a yell, abandoning words in favor of volume. It works, too: everyone freezes in place to stare at her, including Orana, who was halfway up the stairs, and Walter, who was halfway out of bed.

She has maybe two breaths in which to make a decision before she loses the authority granted her by their stillness, and she runs through options faster than she ever has in her life. Is it better to hole up somewhere she can guard the only entrance, or better to run before all escape is cut off?

"Orana," she says. Not snapping, but firm. "Get them dressed, and wrap their feet as best you can. _Fast_."

Orana nods and leaps back into motion, dashing up the last few steps as Charade runs down them just as fast. She needs information, and she doesn't have much time.

Every window she looks from, there are templars and mages slaughtering each other, with looters taking advantage of the chaos. One looter is already climbing into the mansion through a shattered window, pulling himself up with a grunt that turns into a scream as Charade punches him in the nose. He falls the short distance to the ground and comes right back up, face bloody and furious, but Charade has an arrow already nocked, and she fires the moment she has a good target.

Behind his collapsing body, three other looters hesitate before turning their attention to a less difficult target.

It confirms what she'd already suspected, though: escape isn't really an option, not with Walter and a dozen children to consider. By herself, Charade knows she could do it, and with just Orana, the risk would be manageable. With a dozen children, the entire idea is laughable.

She ignores the voice in the back of her head already making plans for a solitary escape--she could go out the same window the looter tried to come in and be a dozen streets away before anyone looked for her--and turns back toward the bedrooms. Leaving the others behind to fend for themselves isn't an option.

By the time she gets back upstairs, the children are mostly dressed, the oldest with their feet wrapped and carrying the youngest.

"Back inside," Charade says briskly, giving them no hint of the terror drying her mouth. "Close the door, and don't open it unless I say."

Tamra's arms tighten on the child she's carrying, and she scowls fiercely. "I can help!"

"I know," Charade says, meeting her eyes deliberately. "That's why I need you in there."

For a moment, she thinks Tamra has missed her meaning, then the girl's eyes widen and she swallows. Without another word, she leads the children back into Leandra's bedroom. Walter's pale face is the last thing Charade sees before the door closes.

"Just a moment," Orana says, back down the stairs before Charade can stop her. She'd meant for Orana to be in the room with the children; it just hasn't occurred to her that she needed to say so.

Charade tightens her grip on her bow and resists the urge to chase after Orana. Better to stay here and sweep up the glass as best she can, using the edge of her foot to shuffle it into small piles she can use as a weapon of last resort. If it comes to the kind of close fighting where a fistful of glass powder is effective, she's probably already lost, but she doesn't let herself think about that.

"Here!" Orana says, breathless from running back up the stairs. "It's all I have."

She holds out a small leather pouch, and Charade takes it mostly by habit. It's full of a greenish powder with a dusty smell, and she has her mouth open to ask what it is just as the smell finally triggers the right memory.

"Sleeping powder," Charade says, and Orana nods.

"Messere Hawke gave it to me," Orana says. "Someone only has to breathe it in."

It's a small thing, but Charade has spent too much time with the Jennies to underestimate the value of small things. "Good thinking," she says. Tilting her head back toward the door of the bedroom, she adds, "Keep them calm, all right?"

Orana chews on her lower lip. "Walter can keep them calm," she whispers, twisting her hands together. "I can help out here."

"Doing what?" Charade demands. Her stomach is trying to eat itself, and she just needs everyone as safe as she can get them.

For an answer, Orana takes the pouch back. "I can use this."

"If they get this far, we're fucked," Charade says bluntly.

"If that's true," Orana says, voice trembling, "then it doesn't matter if I'm here or there."

Charade pulls in a deep breath through her nose. "All right," she says on a sigh. "All right."

###

The night seems to last forever.

They make a barricade across the bottom of the stairs by pushing Hawke's bed down it, then lean the table against the railing to grant themselves a small measure of cover. From their vantage point looking over the front room, Charade could empty her quiver before anyone could make it up to them.

When the quiver is empty, of course, there's nothing she can do except throw broken glass and ornamental urns. She tries not to think about that, the same way she tries not to think about the screaming out in the streets. With the windows broken, there's nothing to block the noise.

Or the smell.

Once she and Orana have nearly exhausted themselves destroying Hawke's furniture, they sit together behind the barricade and wait, not speaking. What is there to say? Charade has come close to death before, but sitting and waiting for it isn't something she's used to at all. She'd rather meet trouble on her terms than let it corner her, and she hates that she doesn't have that option tonight.

###

Dawn brings no relief, and finally Charade allows Orana to run down to the kitchens and return with what food she can carry. At least Ines can summon ice and then melt it back into water, so while breakfast isn't exactly filling, no one goes away thirsty.

The day alternates between mind-numbing boredom and equally mind-numbing terror. Twice more, looters brave the windows, but their friends are easily dissuaded by Charade's arrows. Both times, she runs down after they're gone to reclaim her arrows from the bodies, jerking them free and carrying them back upstairs. It's a risk, but she'd hate to die for want of one more arrow.

It's late in the afternoon when the front door cracks under some incredible force. Three mages stride into the front room from the front hall, looking around with a proprietary air that puts Charade's back up instantly. They're no different from any of the other looters, then, just looking to take what they want and to the void with everyone else.

"Can I help you, messeres?" Charade asks sweetly, barely looking over the edge of the table. She keeps the bow out of sight, for now.

Two of them jump, and all three turn to stare at her. One of them shifts her weight, as if preparing to leave, and for a moment, Charade hopes.

Then the one in the middle smiles, his hands spreading wide, and a wave of purple fire bursts out from his body. Charade ducks, wondering even as she does it how much protection a stone railing and a wooden table will provide.

None at all, it turns out, though not for the reason she thought: it isn't fire or lightning that hits her, but the pure, gut-deep terror of nightmares, the kind of fear that almost never exists in the waking world. It crawls inside her, closes her throat and tries to close off her mind, to turn her into nothing but an animal, running in terror until someone ends her misery. It's there in her gut, the belief, the _knowledge_ , that she's helpless, the situation hopeless, that there's nothing she can do except run and hope to extend her life by a few more breaths.

She's felt this before, though, and she knows what it is, knows it isn't real, knows her gut is lying to her. Her hands are shaking, but she comes up to one knee anyway, drawing her bow and aiming straight for those smirking, self-satisfied eyes.

Behind her in Leandra's room, someone starts to scream.

The sound startles her, the arrow going wide of her target, and Charade curses as she fumbles for another. Terror is still trying to get the best of her, and it doesn't help at all when the screaming behind her grows louder, more voices joining in. The mage is smiling, looking pleased with himself, and Charade grits her teeth as she gets another arrow between her fingers. Smug bastard, she'll-

A heavy brass pot that yesterday held dried flowers goes flying over the railing and hits the mage squarely in the head, knocking him back several steps. He's stunned for a moment, just long enough for Charade to fire, and this time, her arrow hits him in the chest.

No time to look around and see where the pot came from. The terror is already receding as she draws another arrow and places it neatly in the second mage's throat. Whatever spell he was in the middle of casting flickers out with a few blue-white sparks that make his body twitch.

The third mage is down, groaning and holding her head, shards of pottery all around her. She's an easy target, and Charade doesn't hesitate to take advantage of it.

The screaming behind them hasn't stopped, and the smell of burning is no longer coming only from outside. Charade takes one extra moment to be sure the bodies on the floor below are truly bodies, then she bolts for Leandra's bedroom, half a step ahead of Orana.

Inside, Matthias is huddled on the floor at the center of a ring of flames. The curtains are on fire and the rug is smoldering, the nearest bedposts cracking and scorched black. Everyone else is backed against the walls, eyes wide with terror.

Everyone except Tamra, who jumps in front of Charade. "Don't hurt him!" It's probably supposed to sound fierce, but it comes out as a plea. "Please don't hurt him!"

She's clinging to Charade's arm now, hampering her movements, and while Charade is trying to get free, Orana slips past her.

"Matthias!" Orana says sharply.

And he looks up, an instinctive reaction to the sound of his name. Charade sees his face, streaked with tears and soot, then Orana is--Maker fucking help her-- _leaping_ the circle of flames to land inside it, staggering for balance even as she turns to throw a handful of something into Matthias's face.

His eyes roll back in his head, and he slumps sideways, the circle of flame snuffing itself as he falls. The more mundane fires around the room continue to smolder, but without magic to help, wool and stone don't burn very well.

Charade and Tamra are clinging to each other in mutual shock now, staring at Orana as she picks up Matthias and steps over the charred places on the rug to lay him on the bed beside Walter. Matthias may be unconscious, but Walter wraps both arms around him and holds on like the younger boy can feel it. Or maybe it's for Walter's comfort rather than for Matthias. Certainly he looks almost as terrified as the other children.

"Help me with this," Orana says to the nearest child, bending down to grab a wool blanket that ended up shoved against the wall and so is mostly undamaged.

Uncertain but obedient, the child grabs the other side of the blanket and helps Orana begin to smother the smaller fires still burning around the room.

They've put out the first and are moving on to the next, two of the other children already beginning to imitate them, before Charade and Tamra shake out of their surprise and let go of each other. "See who needs help," Charade says, her eyes and most of her attention on Orana.

Tamra doesn't argue.


	6. Chapter 6

It takes a while to assess the damage, and while the room's furnishings took the worst of it, no one escaped completely. Most of the children have at least a few small burns, and Ines is unconscious, both hands and arms blistered and black.

"She tried to help," Walter says, and Charade can see the same guilt she's feeling in his face. Ines shouldn't have had to do anything; none of these children should have to be responsible for each other.

They use up the last of the elfroot on Ines and the few others with burns extensive enough that infection is a real danger, and Orana mixes up something that lets the rest of the injured sleep, even if it can't heal them.

"Why not use that powder?" Tamra asks, handing the cup holding the sleeping potion off to one of the other children without drinking.

Charade almost steps in to answer for Orana, but she stops herself, thinking of the earlier fight with the mages. Those pots didn't just mysteriously decide to fall on someone, and as unlikely as it seems, the only other person on the landing with her was Orana. If she can defend herself from mages, she probably doesn't need Charade's help to defend herself from Tamra.

"It's a weapon," Orana says, taking the cup away from the other child and handing it back to Tamra. "He'll be sick a good while when he wakes, and sometimes too much can kill."

The powder generally isn't deadly, Charade knows, but occasionally someone reacts badly to it, throat swelling closed until they choke on their own flesh. Elfroot only speeds the process along, and Charade was horrified, the few times she's seen it.

None of which Charade would have shared with Tamra, but the girl only blinks a few times and glances at Matthias. "Oh," she says.

"I'll give you some for if you need it," Orana says, "but it's not a toy. And it doesn't belong to you."

Tamra flushes and reaches into the front of her shirt, handing over Orana's bag of powder without another word.

"Thank you," Orana says, blocking Tamra's second attempt to pass along the cup without drinking.

Outside the bedroom, something shatters the one remaining second-floor window. They all jump, Orana worse than most.

"I'll be back," Charade says, slipping out of the room before she says something stupid. How can someone who jumps at every sound be capable of flinging pots at a mage's head while under the influence of that same mage's nightmares? It makes no sense at all.

On the threshold, she glances back to see Orana beginning to gather up the burned remains of the rugs, directing the uninjured children on what to take and what to leave. Her voice is still high and breathy, but she keeps going anyway. Charade watches her for a moment before remembering what she's supposed to be doing.

There's nothing to be seen on the landing except yet more broken glass, but Charade pulls the bedroom door shut anyway. If someone slips past her, better to give them one more barrier, however flimsy, to get through.

A quick check down into the hall reveals that the corpses haven't moved, and Charade heads for the stairs. She needs to retrieve her arrows and bring up some water; Ines's burns are mostly healed, but she's exhausted, and she won't be conjuring any ice for a while.

"Ugh," someone says from behind her, and Charade almost falls down the stairs in her haste to turn back toward the window. "Fucking Kirkwall."

Charade _knows_ the windowsill was empty a moment ago, but now it has a blond elf with a quiver across her back, an unstrung bow in her hand, and a pair of eyebrows raised almost to her hairline as she looks around the landing and kicks her heels against the wall..

She's not looking at the damage, either, because when she speaks again, it's to say with a curl of her lip, "Weird place for a Jenny, yeah?"

Charade laughs. She can't help it. The day--the month, really--has been too long and too exhausting, and being insulted because of something Hawke did to her is too much. One arm around her sides, she gasps out, "You have no idea."

Behind her, the bedroom door opens and Orana asks in some alarm, "Messere?"

"Messere?" the new elf asks, and now Charade has her full, narrow-eyed attention.

"I can't get her to stop," Charade says, no longer laughing. "I've tried."

Orana comes out onto the landing, closing the bedroom door behind her, and blinks at the two of them for a moment. Her fingers flex at her side, and Charade wonders if she's imagining the weight of the silver bowl that's lying upside down a few feet away.

"Is everything all right?" Orana asks.

"I dunno," the elf in the windowsill says. "Depends."

Charade rubs her forehead, knowing exactly what it depends on. "Look," she says. "I'll explain, but can I please do it while I get my arrows?"

###

The elf's name is Sera, and her response to Charade's explanation is skepticism at first. It doesn't help that Orana follows them, and while she's helpful over all, every time she calls Charade "messere," Sera's eyes narrow again. Internally, Charade curses Hawke, but she tries to keep her patience with both Sera and Orana. Complete exhaustion actually makes that easier: she just doesn't have the energy to fight about anything that doesn't carry the threat of imminent death.

About the time they finish barricading the front door as best they can, Orana seems to realize what's happening. Charade can watch her swallow the word "messere" next time, and while she gets better as they gather supplies in the kitchen, her sentences sometimes have odd pauses and intonations, marking where the word would have been.

Charade has mentally waved farewell to any help from the Jennies when Orana slips again, but this time, it's Sera she calls messere.

Sera's head whips around to stare first at Orana and then at Charade, who shrugs and gives her an "I told you so" look.

"Do we think that's enough water?" Charade asks innocently.

She can't hear Sera's answer, muttered to the floor in dark tones, but that's probably just as well.

###

As soon as they're back on the upstairs landing, Orana retreats into Leandra's bedroom with the food and water she's carrying. Charade sets her own burdens on the floor, well clear of any glass shards, then goes back down the stairs to start clearing out the bodies.

Sera follows her, and neither of them speaks until they've once again picked their way to the bottom of the stairs. As they cross the room, Charade makes a point of kicking the brass pot that's lying on the floor where it rolled after hitting the mage.

"That's Orana's work," Charade says, brushing her fingers over her face to indicate the broken cheekbone on the corpse at her feet. She tilts her head at the body lying in a mess of broken pottery. "That, too."

"Your arrows, though," Sera says.

"My arrows," Charade agrees. "But against three mages? Even I don't shoot that fast."

Sera hoots with laughter at the implied boast, but when she pauses to look around the room at the bodies, her face is serious again. "Good aim," is all she says, and Charade knows she isn't talking about the arrows.

"Very good aim," Charade agrees, trying not to sound smug. Orana is the only one who has the right to be smug about that, but Charade can't quite control her smile.

In the hopes of covering it, she says as they lift the first body, "I was beginning to wonder if anyone had seen my messages."

"Shitting Kirkwall," Sera mutters. "Whole city's shite. Shite, shite, _shite_."

Under normal circumstances, Charade would take offense to that. With looters and mages and templars slaughtering each other in the streets, now doesn't seem like the right time. "Could the Jennies help us get out of here?"

"How many's 'us'?"

"Fifteen," Charade says, wincing and not at all surprised when Sera shakes her head.

"Could get you food," Sera offers.

"We don't really need it," Charade says. "What we need is elfroot."

Sera makes a thoughtful noise, which is better than a doubtful one, and Charade looks at her, suddenly hopeful.

"Could maybe get some," Sera says. She looks around the hall, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Place is big, yeah?"

"Unfortunately," Charade says.

"What about food? You got some, but how much?"

"Enough," Charade says, a little wary.

"Enough for a few more?"

"A _few_ more."

Sera grins maniacally. "How d'you feel about mages?"

Not very kindly at the moment, though even thinking that makes Charade cringe with guilt. "So long as they're not seven years old, we can manage."

"Nah, been a long time since any of this lot was seven." Sera is all but bouncing now. "You've got food, and they got exactly what you need."

###

Sera stays long enough to guard the front door while Charade makes three trips down into the cellar for more food. Depending on how long the fighting lasts, they'll probably all be sick of apples and dried fish, but at least they'll be alive to be sick of it.

Once Sera is gone, Orana comes back out to the landing, and they sit behind the up-turned table, backs resting against it and their shoulders just touching. Orana tells a story about the first time she tried to make dinner for Hawke and learned the hard way not to leave anything unattended with the dog around. Charade replies with a heavily-edited story about a ball she attended once, and when Orana asks eager questions about the dresses, Charade is happy to spend the afternoon describing them in detail.

Just before dark, Tamra creeps out of the bedroom. She looks very young, her hands gripping her knives for comfort rather than threat. "I can keep watch," she says, her voice trembling a little.

Charade intends to send her back into the bedroom, but before she can open her mouth, Orana says, "You can keep me company."

"And what am I?" Charade asks, amused and a little surprised.

Orana ducks her head, but at least her shoulders don't hunch. "Tired," she says. "You're tired."

Charade laughs, even more surprised. "True enough."

"We can keep watch for a while, and you can sleep." Orana looks at Tamra and waves her over. "You'll be right there if we need you."

After a bit of arguing--and that's a surprise all its own, Orana arguing with her, however mildly--Charade sleeps in Hawke's bedroom with the door open. She keeps her bow close to hand and sleeps in short spurts, jolting awake at the slightest sound, but by dawn, she has to admit that she does feel a little better.

"Your turn," she says to Orana.

"Our turn," Orana says agreeably.

It doesn't escape Charade's notice that Orana's ready agreement effectively cuts off any protest from Tamra, and she turns away to hide a smile.

Sitting guard by herself is boring despite the fighting still passing by intermittently. The noise has become background, only noticeable when she forces herself to pay attention, and it's impossible to maintain any level of true fear for days at a time. She starts out planning strategies to use against whoever comes through the door next, but by early afternoon, she's moved on to balancing arrows on the tips of her fingers and counting blocks in the floor.

She's just managed to simultaneously balance two arrows point-down when someone knocks on the front door.

It's a loud knock, but it's also just a knock, and Charade drops both arrows, more surprised than she would have been by another explosion. Orana stumbles out of Hawke's bedroom, Tamra right behind her, the girl blinking sleepily as she comes into the light. There's nothing sleepy about Orana's expression: her eyes are tight and her cheeks are pale, her body braced for another fight. Charade would laugh at such a reaction to a simple knock, except that she's just as tense. It might be the mages Sera talked about, or it might be someone hoping to allay suspicion long enough to get into the house without a fight.

"I'll check it," Charade says. "You stay here, and be ready."

She's already headed for the stairs, not expecting an argument, when Orana says, "I should go." Charade stares at her, and her hands twist together. "You can shoot, and I can't."

A bow has better range and accuracy than a pot, no matter how well thrown, but Charade can't stomach the thought of sending Orana down to face what could be another attack. "I can't see the front door from here," Charade says. Which is a valid objection, even if it isn't the real one.

Orana gives her a look that says exactly how transparent she is, and it's so unlike her that Charade forgets for a moment how to argue. Whoever's at the door chooses that moment to knock again.

"We'll both go," Charade says. At Tamra's outraged protest, she adds, "I need you here, in case we need to come back this way fast."

She has a horrible feeling she's not going to be able to put Tamra off too many more times, but it works this time, even if there is sulking.

Down in the front room, Charade and Orana pause to look through the doorway from the front room into the front hall and the door opposite them. The table is still blocking most of it, a few strips of light around the edges.

"Who's there?" Charade calls, hoping to avoid getting closer, but the answer is too muffled to understand. Maker's mercy.

"Stay to the side," she says quietly to Orana. "Don't get any closer than you have to, and don't stand directly in front of the door. I'll call again, you just listen for the answer."

Orana nods and slips out into the front hall, completely silent as she circles around toward the door. A few feet away, she stops, and Charade calls again, "Who's there?"

Another answer, no clearer than the first, and Orana frowns in puzzlement.

"Louder!" Charade calls. "I can't hear you!"

The answer is definitely louder, if still unintelligible, but Orana is returning. She hasn't lost her puzzled frown, and Charade rubs her fingers over her bow string, feeling it hum as she plucks at it.

"Wasn't her name Sera?" Orana asks as soon as she's back at Charade's side. "The elf who was here yesterday?"

Charade nods. "Did they give her name?"

"No," Orana says slowly. "And maybe I didn't hear right, but I think they said they were friends of Red Jenny?"


	7. Chapter 7

There are five of them, three mages and two Tranquil. The latter would make Charade nervous under normal circumstances, but right now, she's too busy being grateful that one of the mages is a spirit healer.

Her name is Miriam, and despite her ragged clothes and lack of a recent bath, her poise is unshaken. With a casual authority Charade admires, she sends the Tranquil to collect food and her fellow mages to place wards around the house while she follows Charade and Orana back up the stairs. She sizes up all the children with an expert gaze, then begins to work her way around the room, touching a hand here, a forehead there. Only three times does she actually use magic, but just having her here brightens everyone's mood.

"I'm sorry," she says when she's finished her inspection. "I'd do more, but our trip here was not as easy as I might have wished."

"Of course," Charade says, smiling faintly. "And I'm sorry I can't offer you anything better than blankets on the floor, but our day hasn't been as easy as I might have wished, either."

The corner of Miriam's mouth turns up. "Blankets on the floor are better than what we've had." She coughs delicately. "And we were told you might have food to spare."

"Oh, yes!" Charade says. She turns toward the corner where they piled the food, only to find Tamra at her elbow with an armful of food. Beside her, one of the other children holds a used-to-be-ornamental urn filled to the brim with water.

Miriam takes the food with polite thanks and divides it among the others, then eats her portion carefully. The others follow her lead, though Charade can see that it's hard for all of them. Now that she has a moment to breathe, Charade can see how gaunt they are, and she wonders at the fact that Miriam had the energy for any healing at all. At least feeding them is easy enough. There are a large number of problems Charade can't solve right now, but food is one thing she can definitely provide.

###

With more people to take turns on watch and mages who can set wards around the house, Charade can get a little real sleep at last. Curled up on the rug in Hawke's bedroom, back-to-back with Orana and covered in blankets that smell strongly of smoke, Charade still falls asleep almost instantly.

The fighting has stopped by the time she wakes in the middle of the night, and it doesn't resume in the morning. She keeps them all to the landing and the two bedrooms for another day, but when a few brave merchants begin setting up their stalls in the nearby square, it's hard to argue against everyone's desire to get away from each other. The same urge is beginning to get to her, too.

She ventures out into the city, which is mostly quiet. It's the same tense, waiting stillness as before, but right now, Charade doesn't care. Tomorrow will get here soon enough. Today she can check on Gamlen and try one more time to make him see reason.

It goes about as well as she expected.

"You've got fighting in Hightown, too," Gamlen says with some satisfaction. "I might as well fight down here where I know who I can trust and who I can't."

Charade holds back a sigh. "Or you could fight up there, where at least the building won't burn down around you."

"The building doesn't need to burn down if someone stabs me in the back," he fires back.

Charade gives up and lets the conversation shift to other things. Mostly local gossip about people Charade was only just beginning to know, but it makes Gamlen happy, and he's good with stories, even if he isn't a match for Varric.

There are worse ways to spend her time, after all.

###

Hawke's mansion is unnaturally quiet when she returns, and Charade hesitates in the front hall, fingering her bow. There's no sign of forced entry, so she leaves the arrows in her quiver and steps cautiously into the main section of the house.

One of the children is scrubbing at the hearth with a level of fierce concentration that's almost alarming. In the next room, Tamra is sweeping while one of the youngest children holds a dustpan for her, and in the room after that, another child is perched in a windowsill to wash the glass.

More and more bemused, Charade makes her way to the kitchen, where she finds Orana directing three more children in the proper methods for cleaning cast iron versus copper pots. It takes two of them to maneuver the largest pot, but they apply the same intense concentration to their task as any of the others have shown.

They're not aware of her yet, all four of them too wrapped up in their work, and Charade leans against the doorframe to watch. However diffident Orana is around Charade, she's not in the least bit shy about correcting the children or reminding them what they're supposed to be doing. As quick as she is to praise them when they get it right, she's equally quick to correct them, ordering them about with brisk confidence.

At least until she sees Charade, and then she jumps. "Oh, messere, I didn't see you!" She presses a hand to her chest, looking completely flustered. "I hope you don't mind, I just thought perhaps we should clean a bit. The estate hasn't had a proper cleaning in too long!"

Charade couldn't possibly care less about the state of the windows or the hearths, but she's not going to say so to Orana. "It looks good." She looks at the children struggling to turn the cast iron pot so they can scrub away at a new section of it. "It all looks good."

"Thank you, messere," Orana says, still flustered. "I hope it wasn't too forward of me..."

Where's the woman who was throwing pots at mages' heads a few days ago? Gone, apparently, along with the composure Orana displayed before she knew Charade was there.

"What can I do to help?" Charade asks.

"Oh, nothing, messere," Orana says. "We're nearly done here."

Normally Charade would argue, but she's too tired right now. Easier to take herself off to Hawke's workshop and take a true inventory of what supplies are left. If she ever does manage to find a merchant with something worth buying, at least now she'll know what she needs.

###

Supper is a quiet meal, even accounting for the fact that the children still have to eat in two shifts. Most of them are nodding off over their food, looking no different from Matthias, who's only just beginning to recover from the sleeping powder. They're all cross-eyed and sleepy, mumbling to each other in half sentences, and they go off to bed without protest.

When the last of them has staggered up the stairs, Charade rolls up her sleeves to begin washing dishes. Asking Orana if she wants help is pointless, and Charade is tired of watching other people work while she sits around.

"You don't need to do that," Orana protests.

"You've done everything else today," Charade points out. "I can do this."

"Oh, I did hardly anything! The children were so very helpful, once I showed them what to do."

Charade smiles and reaches for the first cup. "That was a good idea, by the way."

"What idea?" Orana asks.

"You know what idea," Charade says. "You don't have to pretend you didn't know exactly what would happen, running them all ragged like that."

Orana is silent a long time, and Charade finally looks over one shoulder at her. "I'm not upset," she adds, in case it wasn't clear. "They needed something to do, or they'd just go crazy, sitting around waiting for the fighting to start again."

" _Will_ the fighting start again?" Orana asks.

"Almost certainly," Charade says, wishing it wasn't so. "At this point, I think all we can do is be grateful we have enough food. That by itself makes us luckier than most right now."

The silence stretches out, and Charade has to fight the urge to break it. She focuses on washing the dishes instead, paying unnecessary attention to scrubbing away any trace of food.

"I never went hungry when I was Hadriana's slave," Orana murmurs, startling Charade with the change in conversation. "Unless it was a punishment, of course. But I learned how to avoid those, and there was always enough food when I did as I was told."

Charade turns a little, trying to see Orana's expression, but she's backlit by the fire and her face is in shadows. The only sign of emotion is the way she turns a cup around and around in her hands as she says, "These children? Most of them have never known anything but hunger."

"They have food now," Charade says quietly.

"For now," Orana says. "Until someone takes it away again."

"I won't let them."

"Can you stop them?" Her tone is resigned, rather than plaintive or challenging.

"I'll do my best," Charade says, turning a little more. She wants desperately to see Orana's expression, but she isn't sure what might happen if she moves closer.

Orana doesn't seem to hear. "I thought it would be better here," she says to the cup in her hands. "But it isn't. It's different, but it's not better. Their parents are dead, just like my papa, and they're alone, just like..." She swallows hard, cutting herself off. "They're alone, and this isn't Tevinter, but it's the same in all the ways that matter, isn't it?"

"No," Charade says. She abandons the dishes and dries her hands on the hem of her shirt as she crosses the kitchen to put a hand on Orana's arm. Is a hug too much, when Orana's barely moved past calling her messere?

Probably, so she settles for rubbing her hand up and down Orana's arm. "It is different, and they're safer here than most anywhere in Kirkwall. You said it yourself, this house is strong. No one's going to set it on fire, and they'd have a hard time knocking it down."

"They'll come in anyway," Orana says. "Doors, windows, however they can."

"We can cover the windows," Charade says, and what started as an attempt to cheer up Orana is beginning to spark something in her own head. "Maybe not with stone, but we can block them other ways, at least the downstairs ones. Block off the doors we don't use, lay traps where we can't block them off, force anyone to come through the main door if they want us."

"And what then?" Orana asks. Her arm is trembling under Charade's hand, and she sounds ready to cry. "If you die, there's nothing we can do."

"There is," Charade insists. "That wasn't me throwing pots at people's heads, and anyone else can hold the stairs if they need to, same as I did."

"If they knew how to shoot," Orana says. "If they had enough arrows."

"Then we make sure they have enough arrows," Charade says. "We make sure they know how to shoot."

Orana shudders, and Charade puts an arm around her shoulders, gingerly. "I can teach them," Charade says. "And we can find arrows. We can make them if we have to."

"We can," Orana whispers, but it's not agreement so much as it is an unwillingness to argue.

"We'll start tomorrow," Charade says, as if Orana's agreement was sincere. She rubs at Orana's upper arm, pulling her in closer as she muses aloud, "There are a few things we'll need, that we didn't before. Could you get in touch with your suppliers again, get us what we need if I make you a list and get you the coin?"

"Of course," Orana says. She sounds almost offended by the suggestion that she couldn't, and Charade grins to herself.

"I'll make the list in the morning," Charade says, thinking about the state of Hawke's strongbox. "You've looked more recently than I have. Do we have much coin left?"

"I used a lot of it," Orana says uneasily. "Even with Messere Hawke's friends, everything costs so much now."

"Well, we'll buy what we can, and make do on the rest," Charade says, already mentally sorting her list into things they'll have to buy and things they can improvise. "And I have some of my own coin."

"I do, too," Orana says, to Charade's surprise. "Have a bit of coin, I mean. I was hoping to buy...well, something silly, and now it can buy something else."

"Buy what?" Charade asks, gently teasing.

Orana's shoulders shift like she tried to hunch them and couldn't with Charade's arm across them. "It's silly."

"I do all kinds of silly things," Charade says. When Orana doesn't answer, Charade throws out the silliest thing she can think of. "A horse and carriage?"

Orana giggles and immediately covers her mouth with one hand. "No, not that silly. Just a dress, like I saw on a lady once. It was so pretty."

She sounds wistful, which is vastly better than she sounded a few moments ago. "What color was it?" Charade asks.

"Oh, you don't want to know about _that_ ," Orana protests.

"Why wouldn't I?" Charade asks. "I like pretty dresses, too." Orana makes a strange coughing noise, and after a moment, Charade realizes with delight that she actually scoffed. "I do! They're just a bit impractical right now."

That brings the mood down again, but not as far as it was. "They're very impractical now," Orana says. "So all that coin can go to something else."

"They won't be impractical forever," Charade says, as much to herself as Orana.

"As you say." She leans into Charade a little bit, then adds, "I'd like that."


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning, Charade gets out of bed--or rather, out of her blankets--determined to carry through on her implied promise to Orana. They're not helpless, and they don't have to sit waiting for the next attack to succeed. She _refuses_ to wait.

They pull Miriam in on their planning, and the three of them walk through the house together. For all that she's lived here for weeks, Charade is amazed at the sheer size of the thing, and she begins to understand why Hawke had a large portion of it closed off. It's intimidating, trying to think what to do with all that space, and Charade is glad that most of their planning involves ways to turn it into a trap. Much easier to think of it that way than to imagine it full of people.

It takes most of the day to finalize their plans, and two more days to implement them. The children are enthusiastic and surprisingly effective helpers, and Charade is forcibly reminded that the Tranquil are emotionless, not stupid. Something about their uninflected voices always makes her underestimate them, and she suspects she's not the only one.

They barricade windows and doors, lay wards and more mundane traps, close off whole sections of the estate to channel enemies into places where they can be ambushed or cut off from help. The more they work, the more it feels like this is something that's actually possible. Charade can feel the oppressive air inside the estate lifting, and smiles become a common thing.

Outside, the city remains quiet, but Charade has learned not to trust that. Sooner or later, the fighting will start again, and she intends to be ready for it.

It's almost dusk on the second day when one of the children comes tearing into the workroom and shouts, "Orana needs you!"

Charade barely manages not to drop the clay pot of Antivan fire she was holding, and it takes her a heart-stopping moment to get it down to the table without incident. As soon as she can take her hands off it, she snatches up her bow and follows the child back through the house. Whatever's wrong, she wants to be ready.

What's wrong, it turns out, is that her front hall is full of templars.

After a blink, Charade corrects herself. Despite the way their armor takes up space, there are only ten of them, and their swords are fully sheathed. A few of them are gripping their hilts, but the only blades in sight are Tamra's where she stands beside Orana, scowling as fiercely as she ever scowled at Charade.

The moment Charade steps into the room, all eyes jump to her, the force of their stares almost enough to push her backward.

It takes her a moment to find words, and when she does, the only ones she can find are inane. "Can I help you?"

"That's her," one of the templars says, tugging off his helmet.

Charade's world tilts sideways when she sees his face, and she blurts out, "I hope these friends are better than the last ones."

"I hope we are, too," says the templar at the front, pulling off her own helmet. She's young, perhaps twenty-five, and she stares into Charade's eyes as if trying to read the thoughts off the inside of her skull. "I'm Knight-Lieutenant Dubois."

"Ahhh...Charade Amell." It might be the most surreal introduction of her life.

"Not Red Jenny?"

"Only sometimes," Charade says, shrugging one shoulder. She waits, but when no one speaks, she adds, "Did you...need something?"

Dubois studies her for a while, and Charade suspects she's not the only one who feels off balance. "An end to the fighting would be nice," Dubois says at last. "But in the meantime, we're in search of a place where we at least aren't contributing to it, and I've heard from a few sources that you might have a place like that for us."

Charade studies her in turn. "Are you deserting, then?"

"If you can call it that," Dubois says with a twist to her mouth. "Let's say I made the mistake of following blindly where I was led, and I'd like to stop. If you don't want us here, I'll understand, but I swear by Andraste, all I want is to see this fighting ended."

"And the templars aren't doing that?"

"Maybe the ones in the Gallows are, I don't know. All I know is I followed orders and wound up standing by while my superiors did the kinds of things I became a templar to stop."

Details are something Charade neither needs nor wants. "And if I let you stay?" she asks. "Will you follow _my_ orders?"

"It depends on what they are," Dubois says.

"Not the kind you've been getting," Charade says. "But I think you knew that, or you wouldn't have come here."

"I hoped," Dubois says. "I've found recently that I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did."

Both of them look at the templar Charade first met over Walter's broken body, and she wonders if the decision she's about to make is wise. If Matthias is a barrel of gaatlok, then nearly a dozen templars would make an excellent spark.

"There are mages here," Charade says at last.

Dubois nods, unsurprised. "I know."

"How?" Charade demands.

"Too much magic in the air to just be left over from the fighting." Dubois looks past Charade's shoulder and gives a half smile. "Hello, Miriam."

"Hello, Grace."

Charade turns to look behind her. It's only Miriam there, not the entire household the way she'd half feared.

On impulse, she asks Miriam, "What do you think?"

"It depends," she says calmly. Without looking away from Dubois, she directs her next words a little to the left. "Alexander. Take your helmet off."

One of the templars stirs, but he waits for Dubois's nod before he does as ordered.

Not a templar, Charade sees the moment his head is bare: a Tranquil, dressed as a templar, presumably to help in their escape.

"Hello, Miriam," he says in that dead voice that makes Charade's skin crawl.

"Hello, Alexander," she says. "Who made you Tranquil?"

"There were several templars present," he says. "None of them are here."

 Miriam nods and looks back at Charade. "The choice is yours, but I have no objections."

Everyone else is silent as Charade looks back at Dubois and says, "This isn't a Circle." She makes her tone flat and uncompromising. You won't treat them like it is." 

Dubois clearly isn't entirely happy, but she nods. "I understand." She looks over her shoulder and makes deliberate eye contact with each of her templars. "We _all_ understand." 

Charade takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, seeking Orana's gaze with her own. Orana looks back, her face as expressionless as any Tranquil, but when Charade arches her eyebrows in question, Orana's chin dips very slightly.

###

The rest of the day is almost as tense as Charade feared. Dinner is usually done in shifts, but tonight, it has to be. No one wants to risk seating strange templars at the same table with a mage, even if they're all now sharing a roof.

The next morning requires them to undo some of their previous traps to make enough room for another ten people. At least that means they also have another ten pairs of hands to do the work, and Dubois has some suggestions for re-doing the traps that Charade likes very much.

"Why do you listen to _her_?" Tamra mutters, when Dubois is out of earshot. "She's a templar, maybe she's lying."

"If the templars wanted us out of here, they could take us by force," Charade says. It's more blunt than she would normally be with a twelve-year-old, but pretty lies are too much of a danger right now. "And who better to know a templar's weakness than another templar?"

Tamra looks supremely unconvinced, but she says nothing more to Charade.

###

They make it three days before the first incident, and somehow, Charade is unsurprised that it involves Oren, the templar she met weeks ago. He's the youngest of the templars by several years, and his attempts to make friends with Walter would be amusing if they weren't so pathetic. Making friends with Walter means making friends with Walter's family, and Charade has to give Oren this much credit: he's made a good effort, that's for certain.

To little effect, but he has made an effort.

So when she comes running to the sound of screams, it's no surprise at all to find Matthias on the floor and Oren standing over him with his hands in the air, Tamra's knife at his throat and sparks of lightning at Ines's fingertips. Half of the other children were already in the room and the other half are pouring in behind her, all of them talking at once.

"Quiet!" Charade bellows. "All of you, quiet! Tamra, step back. Ines, stop."

And they do. It takes a few moments, and Tamra's idea of stepping back is less than half the distance Charade could have wanted, but soon enough, they're all quiet and nobody's overtly threatening anyone anymore.

Charade points into the crowd of children, mostly at random. "Get Dubois and Walter." Two pairs of feet dash away. "The rest of you. Find somewhere else to be." This time, the feet drag instead of dash, but they go, all except Tamra.

"What happened?" Charade asks, only to be interrupted by Walter's arrival, followed shortly by Dubois with Miriam on her heels. At least none of them try to take control of the situation away from her, and the interruption gives her a little time to collect her patience.

She has a feeling she's going to need it.

"All right," she says, "let's try this again. What happened?"

"He hurt Matthias!" Tamra bursts out, before Oren can do more than open his mouth.

"He was on fire!" Oren snaps back, and Charade wants nothing more than to close her eyes and wait for all of them to go away.

"He was on fire?" Miriam asks.

"Not burning," Oren says. "It didn't burn him, but it was burning the rug, and who knows what else would have caught!"

"Why was Matthias on fire?" Charade asks Tamra. She has to hold back an inappropriate giggle at the unexpected direction of her life, that she finds herself asking anyone such a question.

"He got scared," Tamra says. She's not looking at Charade anymore, and Charade's eyes narrow.

"Who scared him?" Tamra won't answer, and that's answer enough. A few of the other children are a little too fond of playing pranks on each other, and while they're all old enough to know better than to startle Matthias, they have a tendency to forget after too long without an incident.

"I'll deal with it," Walter says, tight-lipped with anger.

Charade is happy to leave him to it, just as she'll be happy to leave Oren to Dubois's tender mercies as soon as she knows exactly what happened.

"So Matthias lost control," Charade says, "and then what?"

Oren is silent, looking both guilty and defiant, and just like Tamra's non-answer, Charade can fill in the gaps here, too. "You used smite on a seven-year-old boy?"

"I didn't know what else to do!"

Charade isn't entirely sure she blames him, but Maker's mercy. The only way it would be worse is if he had been the one to scare Matthias in the first place.

"All right," she says tiredly, ready to be done with them. This is all Hawke's fault, and Charade isn't sure she's ever going to forgive her cousin for this. "Miriam, take Matthias. Tamra, go with Walter. Oren, find a better way to control magic than knocking a child unconscious."

"I can't," Oren says, confused. "It's...it's a weapon, it's not something I can control like that."

He looks to Dubois for help, and she nods reluctant agreement. "It's more a grenade than an arrow. We're not taught to do anything other than aim it in the right direction."

Charade smiles at both of them, showing all her teeth. "Then learn."


	9. Chapter 9

Charade has had better weeks than the one that follows, though everyone is on their best behavior. It's the sort of excessive politeness that's almost a mockery of itself, except no one is laughing. The best she can do is keep the templars away from Tamra and Matthias, and make sure everyone is too exhausted at the end of the day to make any kind of trouble.

The problem is that there are a finite number of tasks she can hand out, especially with this many people.

"Can I make them run up and down the stairs all day?" she asks Orana one night. It's just the two of them in the nearly-dark kitchen, the fire banked and everything put away except the cups of tea they each hold. "Or maybe dig holes in the garden? Then tomorrow, they could stay busy by filling the holes back in!"

Orana toys with her cup, not meeting Charade's eyes.

"Out with it," Charade says, not unkindly. "What horrible chore should I give them tomorrow?"

"Maybe...none?"

"None?"

Orana swallows, and Charade can sense her willing herself to keep going. When she doesn't, Charade touches her hand where it's curled around her cup. "Come on," she coaxes. "Tell me what you mean."

"Well," Orana says, her voice anxious, "they've worked so hard, maybe it would be nice to have a day to themselves?"

"I hate to think what trouble they'd find, without someone to keep an eye on them," Charade says, stroking the back of Orana's hand to show she's joking.

And Orana actually laughs, if quietly. "Then maybe not a day to themselves? A...a party?"

"What would we be celebrating?" Charade asks. "Surviving this long?"

"It's not such a bad thing to celebrate, is it?" Orana asks. "Isn't that what we did every year when we celebrated Hawke's birthday?"

"In Hawke's case, yes," Charade says, laughing. "But that's not how most people think about their birthdays."

"Isn't that what it is, though?" Orana asks. "Telling your friends, your family, that you're glad they're still here?"

Charade thinks of Orana's father and squeezes Orana's hand a little tighter. "I suppose so."

###

For a house that's all but under siege, they throw an impressive party. Orana spends the entire day cooking, ordering children and templars and mages and Tranquil about with equal authority, and not a one of them argues with her. The voices Charade hears are excited rather than angry or frightened, and hardly anyone glares at anyone else all day.

Given the way things have been going all week, Charade is prepared to call that a miracle.

The party begins at dusk, all of them eating dinner in the garden around a bonfire Matthias started with some help from Ines. Charade will admit to having found that part a little nerve-wracking, but Miriam and the other mages had been in favor of it, and so she'd kept her mouth shut in front of anyone else.

"Let him see that his magic isn't always terrible," Miriam said. "If he isn't afraid of it, then it will be easier for him to control it."

Charade will admit now that she was right: every time Matthias looks at the fire, he smiles, happy the way a seven-year-old boy should be. All right, maybe the source of that happiness is unusual, but Charade is just glad to see him smile.

After they've eaten, Orana brings out her lute and plays a while. Miriam and two of the templars sing beautifully, and one of the Tranquil plays a small reed pipe, and between them, they keep the music going long into the night. The children start the dancing, but the adults join in soon enough. One of the templars can also play the lute, and he makes a point of taking over from Orana when she looks longingly toward the dancing.

She dances with Walter, with Oren and Dubois--who definitely looks more like a Grace and less like a Knight-Lieutenant tonight--with Tamra and Ines and Oren again.

For some reason, it's the sight of Orana laughing up into Oren's face that drags Charade into the dancing without admitting to the vague irritation she feels. There's no reason to be irritated right now, and she forgets about it soon enough once she's dancing. Orana is as happy to dance with her as with anyone else, and if Charade claims more than her share, well. No one comments, and Orana doesn't seem to mind.

The dancing winds down eventually, and the stories begin. Nothing too frightening or gruesome, but they all know at least one good tale. While some of them are definitely better at the telling of those tales than others, it doesn't matter tonight. Charade has a comfortable place beside the coals, with a crate to lean against and Orana beside her.

"You were right," Charade says, quietly so as not to interrupt the current story. "This was a good idea."

Orana looks at her from the corner of one eye, smiling. "I'm glad you think so."

Charade puts an arm around her shoulders to hug her. "Everybody thinks so. Because it is."

"Thank you," Orana says. She shifts to fit under Charade's arm a little better, so that her head is resting on Charade's shoulder. "I'm glad it worked."

Her hair smells of smoke and clean sweat, and Charade rests her cheek against it, content with the world.

###

Now that the Jennies know where to find her, there's a constant stream of people stopping by the house. Many of them are only there to bring news, but a few of them stay. Orana's contacts within the city continue to provide a steady, if expensive, source of food, and Charade is just as glad to be able to do something with all the rooms in this mansion Hawke has stuck her with.

At first Charade worries that the additions to the house will increase the tensions running every which way, but having new people around offers an excellent distraction. There are rooms to clean and stories to tell and traps to lay, and the arguments gradually get lost in the shared smugness of "look what we did!" It helps that Dubois has a firm grip on her templars and that Walter finds a variety of ways to keep the children occupied elsewhere. The party smoothed over the worst of the rough edges, and time seems to be doing the rest. Petty arguments are unavoidable, but Charade stops waiting for Tamra to trip and "accidentally" stab Oren in the back.

Oren even manages to strike up a friendship with Ines, much to Charade's amusement. Whenever she goes looking for one of them, she finds both of them together, usually bent over scraps of parchment or strange marks drawn on the ground. Once, she finds them in heated debate over the remnants of a ward, both of them pointing at it and talking over each other until they see her and go instantly silent.

"Is there a problem?" Charade asks, looking the two of them over. The looks they're giving her are far too innocent.

"No problem," Ines says, her chin tilting up in a clear imitation of Tamra. "I was just practicing my wards."

Charade quirks an eyebrow at Oren and has to bite back a smile when he imitates Ines's posture.

"I was just trying to explain what I saw the mages in the Circle do," he says, "when I watched them practice. Only, it's hard, when I can't actually do it."

"I would imagine so," Charade says. She waits for one of them to say something else--there's definitely more going on here--but neither of them cracks, and eventually, she shrugs and leaves them to it. They're not hurting anything, after all, and she has too many other things to worry about.

Such as the fighting in the city, which continues to flare and die, always in Lowtown or Darktown. Charade watches it with a wary eye, and she knows the others are doing the same. Half of them may be children, but they're children who grew up in alienages, as refugees, as apostates. They understand the danger just as well as she does.

###

Early morning a few weeks after the templars arrived, Charade is teaching some of the children how to fletch arrows when Dubois comes looking for her. That's not unusual in and of itself, but her face is too carefully controlled for the news to be anything good.

As soon as they've stepped away from the children, Dubois says without preamble, "The templars have been looking for Red Jenny."

Charade's stomach drops. "And have they found her?"

"Her, and a band of apostates, too." Dubois runs a hand through her hair, tugging on it in clear frustration. "They feel it's their duty to remove such a threat, good little templars that they are."

"Which templars?" Charade asks. "All of them?" She's learned more than she wanted to know about the various splinter groups in the city, and while fighting has thinned the numbers somewhat, there are still enough to overrun this house if they decide to work together again.

"My templars," Dubois says with a twist to her lips.

Not Oren and the others she brought with her, but the faction they left behind. And Charade all but slapped them in the face with the name Red Jenny when she sent Oren back to them with nothing else to cover the deaths of three templars.

Maker's mercy.

"How did you find out?" she asks, as calmly as she can.

"I have a few contacts still among them. People who want to leave but have friends who don't, or family that would be in danger if they did. One of them sent me word as soon as he knew what was happening." Dubois is standing nearly at attention now, her gaze fixed on the wall behind Charade. "The only reason he found out at all is because they're planning an attack. Tonight."

Charade's heart drops to join her stomach. _"Tonight?"_

"If I'd known sooner, I would have told you," Dubois says stiffly. "But of everyone who wanted to leave, I was the highest rank. Those remaining are mostly recruits, and templars so new they're still pretending lyrium tastes good."

"I'm not blaming you," Charade says.

"I'm blaming me," Dubois says. "I should have expected this and asked my contacts to stay alert to the possibility."

"Too late now," Charade says gently.

Dubois smiles without humor. "I certainly hope not."


	10. Chapter 10

The better part of a day to prepare is generous by the measure of the last weeks, but it still doesn't feel like enough. A small part of Charade wishes they'd had no warning at all, because then there wouldn't be time to debate tactics and to worry over whether they've made the right choices. As it is, by mid-afternoon they've done everything they can to prepare, leaving them too much time to think.

Charade wanders around the house for a while, checking on traps that don't need to be checked, until she realizes that her pacing is making the less experienced fighters nervous.

She retreats to the kitchen, which is empty except for Orana, and confines herself to that room. Orana ignores her pacing, apparently unconcerned by it as she assembles bundles of food and water that can be distributed quickly, once the fighting starts. The kitchen table is already covered in similar bundles, and after a while, the stack grows tall enough that even Charade knows it's too much.

"Stop," she says, taking Orana's hands in hers when Orana tries to begin work on another bundle. "We both need to stop."

"I don't know what else to do," Orana says, her voice shaking.

"Neither do I," Charade says, stroking her thumb over the back of Orana's hand. "But maybe we just need to stop doing for now."

"I'll go mad," Orana says, then smiles tremulously. "We'll both go mad."

Charade laughs softly. "Probably, yes." She rubs her thumb over Orana's hand again, trying to soothe both of them. "But you have your lute, right? Why don't you play a while?"

"I could do that," Orana says without moving away.

She's standing very close, Charade realizes with a jolt, her face tipped up and her eyes wide. Charade tells herself to move, but her feet ignore her, and her hands don't release Orana's.

"Is there someth-oh!" Walter says from the kitchen doorway, and Charade wishes for a very selfish moment that she'd left him for dead.

"What do you need?" she asks, letting go of Orana.

"Nothing!" Walter says, already backing out of the doorway. "Nothing, there's nothing!"

He's gone before Charade can stop him, but she should probably be grateful. Without his interruption, she would have done something very stupid, at a time when she needs to be smarter than ever.

"Some music would be nice," she says, not looking at Orana as she follows Walter from the room.

And it is nice. Drawn by the music, the rest of the household drifts in until everyone is there, all except the few on watch out in the streets. Others volunteer to play when Orana tires, and while there's no dancing, it's enough like the party that some of the children begin to relax.

Then the front door bangs open to let in one of their lookouts, and everyone scatters to their posts, those who can't fight retreating deeper into the house. Charade has a moment to be proud of everyone before she's slipping between the templars on guard at the foot of the stairs, racing for her own place on the balcony overlooking the front hall. All the mages are there, as are two of the templars and everyone else who can swing, throw, or shoot any kind of weapon. At least Hawke left a good supply of weapons and staffs behind, stuffed in various corners of the house, and Charade has never before been so grateful for someone's inability to discard anything.

As she takes up her place by the railing, Oren steps up beside her to murmur, "They shouldn't be here. They're _children_." His head tilts toward Ines, Donall, and Matthias where they stand a little apart from the adult mages.

They've already had this argument once, and Charade is done with politeness. "What makes you think they haven't done this before?"

He opens his mouth on an automatic protest, then closes it again, his face going pale.

A little more kindly, Charade asks, "You grew up in Hightown, didn't you?"

"Yes." He smiles weakly. "Does it show?"

"Sometimes," she says. "But we try not to hold it against you."

He laughs a little. "And I appreciate it." His eyes dart back to the children. "It just seems wrong to have them here."

It's not an argument this time, and so Charade can admit, "I know. But we need every hand we can get."

"I know," Oren echoes. He sighs deeply. "I know."

Below them at the bottom of the stairs, Dubois intones, "Let us pray," and the templars kneel in a rattle of armor. Oren looks at them, one knee bending before he catches himself.

Prayer has never been much comfort to Charade, but she isn't going to stop anyone else. "Go ahead," she says.

He shoots her a grateful look and kneels. From behind her comes the rustle of cloth and occasional jingle of mail as others imitate him, and she bows her own head respectfully as Dubois begins her prayer. It's significantly more martial than the prayers Charade remembers from her childhood, and the sentiment, if not the devotion, is something she can agree with whole-heartedly.

When the prayer is over, the templars rise as one, Oren matching the others even from this distance. It makes Charade feel a little better about their chances, watching them. The Jennies are far from organized, and she forgets sometimes what strength there is in the kind of discipline she's always avoided. Though really, she would have preferred to go the rest of her life without being in a situation where she was forced to remember.

 _This is all Hawke's fault,_ she thinks, but the words have no force behind them. Looking back, she can point to each choice she's made that brought her here and name every time she could have turned in a different direction. Choices she wouldn't change even if she could, and blaming Hawke for the position she's in now is unfair.

The runes inscribed on the floors throughout the house begin to glow, and although there's no sound, everyone twitches except Miriam and the templars. It's a silent ward, designed to provide a warning to those inside the house, without alerting anyone outside the walls. Hopefully, that warning is enough for those hiding elsewhere in the house.

Charade puts an arrow to her bow without pulling back the string. At the foot of the stairs to her left, the templars draw their swords, though if things go to plan, they'll never see an enemy. The balcony overlooks the front hall, giving the mages and archers a clear view of anyone entering the house, while the templars stand guard at the foot of the stairs, three rooms deep into the house.

Things won't go to plan, of course, but she doesn't think she's being wildly optimistic to hope her templars won't have to bear the full weight of the attack.

"Lights," she whispers, and all the lights go out except the two torches burning down in the front hall. The house looks exactly as it normally would in the middle of the night. No one speaks, and even their breathing is quiet as below them, the front door swings open.

The pause that follows is long enough Charade worries someone will snap, but eventually a shadow moves by the door without stepping into the light. Another pause, another small movement, another pause, and only then does someone in leather armor slide into view.

They're good, whoever they are: nearly silent, sticking to the shadows as much as possible, eyes tracking around the room. They even remember to look up, but with the torch directly under the balcony and no other light to see by, they can't see beyond the railing. Charade knows. She checked.

At the door into the main part of the house, the shadow pauses again, listening at the crack for a long time. So long Charade wants to shoot them just to have done with the waiting, but they get on with it eventually, working the lock open with deft fingers before retreating back across the hall to the front door.

The templars who come through next are surprisingly quiet for soldiers in full plate, though they can't match the shadow who went through first. Charade waits, forcing herself to breathe evenly and hoping no one behind her gets so scared or impatient they don't wait for the signal. Her heart is pounding so hard she can feel it in her fingertips where they pinch the arrow to the string, and she knows everyone behind her is wound at least that tight.

There are still templars coming into the room when the first of them reaches the door into the rest of the house, and Charade can't wait any longer. She rises to her knee as she draws the arrow back, loosing it as soon as the point has cleared the railing. The templar by the door screams as her arrow punches into the weak place under their arm, and below her, the room explodes as her mages activate their wards.

The floor shakes and the air burns, and for a moment, she's afraid they overdid it, piling up so many wards that the whole house will come down around them. Eventually the shaking stops, though, and she peeks over the railing to see that however bad it was up here, it was far worse below. Burned bodies litter the floor of the hall, some of them writhing in pain, and even the templars who are still standing are shaking their heads and staggering.

Unfortunately, they have the same discipline as Dubois's templars, and the reinforcements pouring through the front door point themselves in the right direction immediately. Half a dozen templars with tower shields take up station at the opposite side of the hall from the balcony, granting nearly-perfect cover to the archers who follow them into the room.

It's only nearly-perfect, though. Behind Charade, Miriam barks an order in a tone that would do any military commander proud, and half the templars go sprawling as if knocked down by a giant's fist. Charade and the other archers waste no time taking advantage, arrows seeking out whatever gaps they can find.

The templars change tactics, then, as fast as Charade had feared. The whole block of them moves forward, bracing each other until they're close enough to smite the mages behind her. Only one has the breath to even cry out before they fall. Charade glances back briefly, forcing herself to think only of the plan and not about whether any of her mages will be getting back up.

With the mages no longer a threat, the templars use their shields to provide cover as they rush the door into the rest of the house. Not as thoughtlessly as she'd hoped they would, alas: the first templar to reach the door kicks it open and then jumps back, protected from Charade's arrows by his companions' shields. The Antivan fire intended to catch the first person through the door instead explodes harmlessly against the floor.

The pause while the templars wait for the fire to burn itself out gives the archers more opportunities to shoot, but Charade calls them off after two mostly-unsuccessful volleys. They can't afford to waste arrows, not this early. "Only shoot if you have a target," she tells them, trying to keep her voice low enough that the templars below can't hear.

The Antivan fire burns itself out, and the templars are through the door. Charade only gets one more before they disappear, but she can hear them clearly enough when they reach the first trap, the sharp snap as they learn that the trash scattered across the floor isn't a sign of poor housekeeping. Someone barks an order, and the rattling of armor stops as the attackers come to a halt, presumably to plan their approach through the room.

At the foot of the stairs, Tamra and Walter slip between Dubois's templars to run silently across the room and lob more Antivan fire through the doorway before running back to cover. Given time, the attacking templars could clear the traps in the far room without injury. Charade has no intention of giving them the time.

It's tempting to crane her head around to catch a glimpse of the attackers, but she forces herself to watch the front hall instead. Dubois's contact had indicated the templars would be coming in force, and they haven't seen nearly enough tonight to account for that.

Swords clash at the bottom of the stairs, and Charade almost turns, catching herself in time. She looks back to the front hall, then blinks and frowns. Something flickered by the door, almost like heat haze, but there's nothing there now.

She opens her mouth to issue a warning anyway, too late. A mage appears out of thin air in their midst, surrounded by a glowing sphere that blocks the arrow Charade fires on instinct. Other arrows clatter off it as the mage looks around, getting his bearings before he lashes out with a blast of lightning.

It isn't strong enough to kill anyone, but it leaves most of them twitching as it shocks through every bit of metal they're carrying. Archers are bringing up their bows again, but this time, Charade thinks fast enough to call, "Don't shoot!" Half their force is on the other side of the mage, and all it will take is one bad shot to do the attackers' work for them.

Oren and the other templar stationed on the landing jump forward, swords drawn. Their blades bounce off the protective bubble the same as the arrows, but sparks fly where they hit, and the light flickers each time.

Under the noise, Charade hears a sound she can't place immediately, and turns to find a grappling hook caught in the railing. The rest of the templars she'd been expecting are in the hall below, covering themselves as they hook the railing again and again. Not to climb, either, she realizes in horror: their goal is the pull the railing down and give themselves a clear view.

"Cut the ropes!" she yells as she slashes at the closest. "Cut them _now_!"

All down the line, archers turn and drop their bows, jerking out knives to do as she said. From the corner of her eye, she sees Miriam and Donall stagger upright together, and for a moment, Charade thinks it will be enough. She slashes the last rope with a feeling of triumph that lasts until the second mage appears on the landing beside the first, and where in the Maker's name did rogue templars find two mages willing to help them?

She can only hope it isn't three.

Oren shouts in surprise, leaping back to avoid a gout of flame, just as another grapple hits the railing beside Charade. More are landing, and the archers are beginning to lose ground. Every rope they cut is replaced by another, and one section of the railing gives way, leaving three archers exposed. Two make it to new cover, but the third isn't fast enough. A templar arrow takes him in the throat, and he tumbles over the side without so much as a groan.

Charade risks a glance back. Her other templar is down, Oren fighting...not alone, because other swords are connecting with the barrier, but Oren's is the only one that affects it. If they weren't so crowded up here, he could smite the mages and be done with it, but an attack that undirected would hit their own mages, too. On top of the earlier hit from the attackers, it would be enough to put all of them out for far too long. It might even kill them.

At the base of the stairs, two of Dubois's templars are down. The rest show no sign of stopping, but there are more than a score of the enemy, and almost no one on the landing is in any position to help. Orana kneels at the top of the stairs throwing flasks of Antivan fire, but the templars have their shields up and are mostly staying out of her range. The attacking mages are too perfectly positioned for anyone on the landing to help Dubois's templars, and Charade realizes with a sick lurch that she has to decide: risk her mages, or risk everyone.

Matthias pops up at her side, and she almost falls over the railing in shock. He's sweating in fear, his eyes impossibly wide, but he reaches past her for the closest grapple. The instant his fingers connect, the metal goes from cold grey to white hot and the rope catches fire, burning as it falls.

Charade gets out of his way and waves one arm at the broken railing, yelling at the other archers, "Cover that gap!"

By the time Matthias gets far enough to need it, the others have thrown up a shield to block the missing section of the railing, and Matthias crawls behind it, heating each grapple to white hot. As he gains confidence, the fire travels back down the ropes, and Charade hears shouts of pain and anger from below. No one ever died of a scorched palm, but sometimes fighters died if it hurt to swing their weapons.

There's an outraged cry from a voice Charade doesn't recognize, then the sound of swords hitting flesh instead of a magical barrier. She whips around just in time to see the first mage fall, his face almost comically surprised. Even as she watches, Oren reaches out to touch the second mage's barrier, which collapses under his hand exactly the way it would under a smite. The mage reels back, and Charade remembers.

_Dubois, shaking her head sadly: "We're not taught to do anything other than aim it in the right direction."_

_Her own tight smile. "Then learn."_

_And Ines and Oren, hard at work at something, close-mouthed when she tried to find out what it was._

Apparently, they'd taken her at her word.

With the remaining enemy mage occupied, Charade's mages dodge past Oren to crouch at the top of the stairs beside Orana, one of them whispering frantic directions Charade can't hear. Donall frowns in concentration just as three of the templars stagger sideways, into Orana's range. They go down screaming as Donall's attention moves on. The templars immediately in front of Dubois fall back, stumbling into each other for a moment and unable to find their feet as an unseen force shoves at them. Miriam leans forward, her hand stretched out, and one of the injured templars staggers back to his feet, shaking his head and fumbling for his sword just in time to meet the renewed attack.

Charade drags her gaze away from the fight on the stairs and back to the front hall below her. More templars are coming through the front door, but none of them make it far: lightning stabs down, jolting them so their shields fly out of position. Matthias is still working his way up and down the railing, setting fire to the few remaining rope, and the archers are picking their targets, finding the gaps revealed whenever lightning jumps to a new target.

And then the templar line is breaking. It's not even an orderly retreat for the door, more of a mad scramble that leaves new targets for Ines's lightning and the archers' arrows. The attackers on the stairs are breaking, too, retreating from Dubois's templars to run the gauntlet of traps that blocks their escape, only to face the storm of lightning and arrows in the front hall. Less than a quarter of those who break for the door make it through.

Then the last of them is gone, and Charade becomes aware of Dubois berating one of her templars for breaking ranks to give chase.

Charade swallows a slightly hysterical laughs and drags herself to her feet, needing help from the railing to get all the way there. Below her in the front hall, a few of the bodies twitch feebly, not quite all the way to bodies in truth, and one of them appears to be fumbling at his belt. Looking for a last potion, no doubt.

One templar hardly seems like a danger after everything else, but Charade isn't prepared to risk it. Better to be sure than lose someone _now_ , and she turns toward the stairs, only to find her way blocked. The balcony is a tangle of people hugging and shouting and pounding each other's shoulders, and while she could raise her voice over them, it's easier to let herself down into the front hall through the broken gap in the railing. Hanging by her hands, it's a drop of no more than a few feet, even if the stone floor is broken and cracked.

She makes sure of the bodies, then turns a slow circle in the center of the hall, surveying the damage. _We won, we won, we won,_ is beating in her head along with her heartbeat, which is still pounding from the fight, her body not quite ready to believe it's over.

_We won._

Despite all their preparations, despite her outward confidence, it hadn't seemed possible. She wouldn't have blamed anyone wagering against them, and yet, they're the ones still standing. They're still standing, and their house is still standing, and right now, it doesn't matter that they have days of work ahead of them to put everything back to rights.

_We won._

From the front room comes the sound of running footsteps, then Orana flies through the open doorway into the front hall and slams to a stop, clinging to the doorframe. Her face is wild, sweat-damp hair plastered to her neck, and her eyes go straight to Charade.

"It's all right," Charade says, taking a step forward. She can hardly blame Orana for the same disbelief she feels. "We won." Another step forward, one hand reaching carefully to touch Orana's shoulder, which is heaving as she pants for air. "It's going to take a while to get this mess cleaned up, but we w-"

She doesn't get to finish, because Orana launches herself forward, arms going around her neck to pull her down for a kiss.

It's a bit one-sided, Charade too busy being shocked, and it ends too quickly when Oren hoots with laughter from the balcony. Orana jerks back, blushing furiously, and Charade barely manages to catch her before she escapes.

"You," she says to Oren, stabbing a finger in his direction without looking. "Shut up."

He's still laughing when she kisses Orana again, but Charade has stopped caring.


End file.
